Dan Norris: The most important challenge is changing behaviour. DEFRA provides a grant funding of £25 million a year to Keep Britain Tidy, and about £1.2 million each year goes specifically toward behaviour-changing campaigns, which are clearly targeted, as appropriate. That has raised awareness of traffic litter, resulting in a 25 per cent. reduction in litter from vehicles.

Lindsay Hoyle: My hon. Friend should recognise not only the importance of country of origin labelling and welfare standards, but the importance of ensuring that when people purchase goods they know how many food miles that they have travelled to reach this country, and the importance of recognising the quality of UK farming.

Jim Fitzpatrick: The hon. Gentleman is right. We are sensitive to the tragic impacts on farms, families, regions and areas when TB strikes. The Secretary of State set up the TB eradication group last November. It has met 19 times and has already produced a report that recommended a raft of initiatives to try to deal with this. The problem will only be eradicated in the medium to long-term, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Department is doing as much as it can to support the group.

Ann Winterton: Picking up a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), who has pinched yet another question of mine-the problem is that we both come from the same stable-may I reiterate that approximately 200,000 people living in rural England do not have access to broadband facilities. Would that not aid financial inclusion as it provides access to valuable information, online banking, credit union services and other such services?

Roger Williams: Today many agriculture Ministers will be meeting in Paris to discuss the regulation of agricultural markets and the future of the common agricultural policy. I understand that Conservative shadow Ministers recently visited New Zealand to consider the future of farming without subsidies. Can the Secretary of State explain his position on the future of the common agricultural policy and whether it would include an element of co-funding or direct payment by nation states?

Jim Fitzpatrick: As I discussed with the egg and poultry conference about two weeks ago, our position is still to hold firmly to the 2012 ban on battery cages. I was asked what plan B was. Plan B is to lobby the Commission to ensure that there are no imports of eggs from countries with lower standards, and to introduce a new marking number-number 4-for those eggs that fall below standard. That is plan B, but we have not yet given up on plan A, which is to hold firm, and hope that the Commission holds firm, to the ban on battery cages that will come in in 2012.

Hilary Benn: I agree with the hon. Gentleman completely. We need to get our landfill down, which is why-because of the landfill levy-domestic recycling rates have risen from 8 per cent. to 37 per cent. in the past 12 years. I shall be consulting after the turn of the year on whether we should ban certain products from landfill. Food waste is a good example; why put it in landfill when we could turn it into energy?

George Young: May I thank the Leader of the House for giving us next week's business?
	I warmly welcome the change from the right hon. and learned Lady's initial refusal to allow time for a dedicated debate on the pre-Budget report. The House will want to discuss the issues raised by the Chancellor's statement of yesterday, and we will particularly welcome the chance to highlight that the Government's pay freeze will hit the poorest public sector workers, unlike our proposals, which excluded the million lowest paid employees. This debate will also give Ministers the opportunity to explain the cost to the NHS of the rise in national insurance.
	If I am on a winning streak in asking for debates, may I repeat my other request, for a debate on Afghanistan? I appreciate the efforts that the right hon. and learned Lady is making to ensure that every week we get an opportunity to question Ministers on Afghanistan, but does she appreciate that Members are looking for a more substantial opportunity to discuss Government policy on Afghanistan, particularly in advance of the proposed London summit at the end of January, so can we have a full day's debate, in Government time, early in the new year?
	I welcome today's written ministerial statement from the Leader of the House on the Kelly report. We are relieved that the Government have finally accepted our arguments that legislation is needed now to implement Kelly in full. Can the right hon. and learned Lady give an indication of when this proposed legislation will be brought forward and whether it will take the form of a stand-alone Bill or an amendment to existing legislation?
	When may we debate the motion on private Members' Bills, which has been languishing on the Order Paper for more than a week? Unless we debate and resolve the issue soon, we will run the risk of not debating any private Members' Bills at all in this Session.
	May we have a debate on yesterday's report from the Public Administration Select Committee on the unsatisfactory handling of the special report from the ombudsman on Equitable Life? As the Committee recommends, a mechanism needs to be found so that we can debate findings from the ombudsman without having to rely on either Government or Opposition motions. Does the right hon. and learned Lady agree that it would be sensible for the Government to respond to that recommendation during the debate on the Wright Committee report on Commons reform?
	In the same vein, when will we debate and vote on the Procedure Committee's report on the election of Deputy Speakers? This is an initiative from you, Mr Speaker, which requires action if we are to get a new system in place before the beginning of the next Parliament. The Procedure Committee has said that it is seeking the endorsement of the House. When might it secure it?
	May we have a debate on the Copenhagen agreement early in the new year? This is an historic moment, which we hope will deliver a real and meaningful settlement. Given that, will the right hon. and learned Lady ensure that the House is able to debate the conclusions of Copenhagen in full, and its implications for the UK?
	Finally, as the right hon. and learned Lady has made clear, astonishingly, this is the last business question before Christmas, so, despite the fact that many people have yet to send a single Christmas card, I, too, would like to take this opportunity to offer you, Mr. Speaker, and all hon. Members including the right hon. and learned Lady, as well as all the staff and Officers, from the Clerks to the caterers, the cleaners, the police and the doorkeepers, a very happy Christmas and new year.

Harriet Harman: I am happy to accede to the right hon. Gentleman's request for a debate on the pre-Budget report, and I have announced that. We are also looking for an opportunity to hold a debate on Afghanistan, and, given the context of the London summit, it is obviously even more important that the House has an opportunity to debate the issue, as well as hearing statements from Ministers, which have been made regularly, and hearing from the Prime Minister at Prime Minister's Question Time when he answers on the subject.
	The right hon. Gentleman made a point about the Kelly report and legislation to take forward Sir Christopher Kelly's proposals. We all recognise that the House had to deal with the public anger and concern about the abuse of the allowance system by some Members. The House did not sit back waiting for Kelly. We have already substantially changed the allowance system and legislated for the establishment of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. As the right hon. Gentleman recognises, there will be further legislation, particularly to make it the responsibility of IPSA to decide Members of Parliament's pay and pensions. We had, of course, already voted not to decide our own pay, but we will now bring forward legislation to put that on a statutory footing. I am not yet in a position to tell him and the House whether that legislation will stand alone or be added to existing legislation, but, whatever the vehicle, we are determined and the whole House is agreed that we should go forward on that basis. There is, as he said, a motion outstanding for debate on private Members' business. It is important that that is taken forward, and it will be.
	On Equitable Life, as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury set out in the Opposition day debate on Equitable Life, Sir John Chadwick will produce an interim report by the end of the year, and a final report in the spring. He is hard at work on that very important business.
	The election of Deputy Speakers has been considered by the Wright Committee. The Committee has also considered how the House chooses the Chairs and Members of Select Committees, how the public can provide input to debates in the House of Commons through petitions and how House business is managed. I have written to Opposition parties about those issues, because how we should make progress on them is a House matter; it is not for Government diktat. We want to achieve consensus and we want to bring forward a motion on which both sides of the House can agree. I have asked Opposition parties to give me their views on all the issues that the Wright Committee has dealt with, so that I can introduce promptly, within the time limit that is expected of the Government, a motion that will achieve consensus, so that we can go forward with that important Committee's proposals.
	On the right hon. Gentleman's festive comments-did he say that he had not sent a single Christmas card yet?

David Heath: I, too, welcome the fact that there is to be a debate on the pre-Budget report. I fear that it is unravelling at such speed that we may have to have an alternative pre-Budget report before the original is even debated to correct some of the errors in the first one. Nevertheless, that debate is welcome.
	On private Member's Bills-here, I declare an interest-I am very keen, obviously, that time should be set aside for private Members' Bills and that the resolutions should be considered. However, that is one of the matters discussed in the Wright Committee report, which suggests an alternative arrangement for dealing with private Members' Bills. I cannot for the life of me see what the problem is, given that the Committee has produced a draft resolution, on page 94, to be put before the House. It is not for me, or the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) or the right hon. and learned Lady to decide what is appropriate; it is for the House to decide. The Wright Committee has set out its draft proposals. Why cannot they now be put before the House?
	There will be a debate on universities after today's statements. No doubt, the issue of the fiasco and chaos of the Student Loans Company will be considered, but it would be appropriate to have a statement from the Secretary of State to tell us just what has been happening. More importantly, what is being done about the company's senior management and chief executive? They have let down students across the country, who now find themselves in extreme difficulty. Will there be a statement to that effect?
	May we have a debate on what I can only term abuse of section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 by police? It is not satisfactory that people up and down the country are being stopped and told that they cannot take photographs-and if they have taken photographs, they are asked to delete them from their cameras-apparently on the whim of police officers. So far, people have been told that they cannot take a picture of Christ Church in the City, St. Paul's, railway wagons, Christmas lights-and of Mick's Plaice, a fish and chip shop in Chatham! Such photography is not prime terrorist activity. I honestly think that the police need some education about the very strong powers that we in this House give them, to make sure that they are not used improperly.

Harriet Harman: On the pre-Budget report, there will be a debate when the House returns in the new year, but there is also Treasury questions next week and hon. Members can ask questions and raise issues then.
	On the Wright Committee report, I think that it is perverse of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) to object to being consulted. I will bring the proceedings before the House, but I am consulting the Opposition Front-Bench teams. Of course it is a matter for the whole House, and for Back Benchers on all sides as well as for those on the Front Benches, but it is not unreasonable to give the Front-Bench teams an opportunity to give their views as to what should be brought to the House. However, if they do not want to be consulted, they do not need to respond. I have given them until 16 December.
	The debate this afternoon on students and universities will provide an opportunity to discuss the issues that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
	The hon. Gentleman raised concerns about terrorism, and I can tell him that there are Home Office questions next week when they could be discussed. He also made a point about the smarter Government publication and plain English: if he could pass me a copy of what he read out, I shall work out a translation for him before the end of business questions this morning.

Anne McIntosh: On environmental protection, is the Leader of the House aware that today The Flood Risk Regulations 2009, statutory instrument No. 3042, come into force? They have not been consulted on or scrutinised by this House or issued to all the relevant parties. Will she issue an apology to the House? Will she castigate the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for this? Will she assure us that these regulations will not come into force today, and that they will be properly scrutinised and properly consulted upon? They form part of the Flood and Water Management Bill-she just announced that it will have its Second Reading next week. The DEFRA Whip on the Treasury Bench-

Angela Eagle: Obviously the Conservatives abolished it in the 1980s.  [ Interruption. ] Opposition Front Benchers say that we have done nothing about the earnings link for the basic state pension while we have been in power, but we have raised the basic state pension above prices every year since 1998-99. Every year we have seen a real increase above RPI; in 18 years, the Conservatives increased it once, and they did so to compensate for the introduction of VAT on fuel. We have a far greater record of which to be proud than the Opposition.
	I can confirm that the personal accounts reform programme will begin in 2012 as planned, but there will be a slowing of implementation to enable us to ensure that this very complicated and large programme can be put into effect appropriately.
	On additional pensions, the hon. Gentleman asked why there is no increase this year, and that is because of the feed-through to those private sector pensions that are contracted out. Such a measure would be extremely complicated, and there would then be an increasing difference between public sector pensions, which would get the increase, and private sector pensions, which are often linked to RPI increases and have planned for a zero-rate increase. We felt that that situation would not be desirable, but I emphasise that all pensioners will see a real-terms increase because of the 2.5 per cent. increase that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced in his pre-Budget report yesterday.
	The Opposition have spent the past few months telling us that in the depths of a recession we should cut public expenditure. They voted against the fiscal stimulus and the extra help from the Department for Work and Pensions for those in the real economy who have to deal with the effects of the recession, and for those who have been unemployed. Indeed, the Opposition continue to say that they would cut the deficit further and faster, but I still do not know and I have not heard from the hon. Gentleman whether they support the uprating-whether they support the £2 billion of extra money that we have been able to allocate for the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. I note with interest that he gave us no indication of whether the Opposition support today's statement.

Angela Eagle: I am not embarrassed about a statement on uprating that, at a time of economic challenge and difficulty, puts £2 billion of extra resources into the pockets of people who are often the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. I am rather surprised that the hon. Gentleman could think that I would be.
	The rise in retail prices-indexed benefits is not temporary, but real. It is happening in April next year instead of a zero increase. I would have thought the hon. Gentleman would welcome the fact that we have been able to get extra resources now into the pockets of those on child benefit, disability allowance and incapacity benefit, rather than inflicting on them the zero increase that the RPI benefits would have left them with. We are helping 5.5 million people, and I would have thought the hon. Gentleman would welcome that.
	I confirm that we will increase SERPS indexation in line with the RPI; the question was simply whether we could, in the short space of time, give assistance with additional pension in that way. There would have been a difficulty with uprating the additional pension rather than holding it flat this year; it would have meant that the public sector would have got the increase, but that those responsible for private sector pensions, which are connected to this, would all have been planning for a zero rate increase and would not have been able to increase their pensions in line with the increases we announced in the time available. We therefore felt that it would be better to do it in a more orderly way and keep additional pensions at zero for now. That does not mean that an increase connected to RPI will not come through in due course.

Angela Eagle: We can have some interesting debates about the interaction of benefits, but today we are talking about their uprating rather than changing their balance in the benefits system. We all know from our own constituency case loads of the crucially important work that carers do. That is why I am pleased to be at the Department for Work and Pensions when we are bringing in the historic changes that, from April next year, will credit carers into access to the basic state pension for their caring responsibilities. For the first time, it will be possible for someone who has cared for 30 years and got the credits to qualify in full for the basic state pension. I am very proud of that change, which this Government have managed to bring in.

Phil Willis: What an august start to a debate-I am very grateful to you for making the historic decision to call me, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	I welcome this estimates debate on the report on students and universities that the then Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills published on 2 August. Although I recognise that many Members may wish to broaden the issue, I wish to keep my remarks to the report.
	Far too often, the work of our universities is discussed in isolation from the very people who are the principal recipients, the students themselves. We often talk about research, institutions and organisations without mentioning the students, yet the quality of the experience that they get often not only determines their life chances but is critical to our nation's future. At this time, it behoves all political parties to take the issue of quality and standards in our universities to heart.
	The taxpayer contributes something in the region of £15 billion to our universities, and there are currently about 2.3 million students of different sorts in them. They make a significant contribution too, through the money that they pay universities. The question that my Committee asked was whether the taxpayer and the students got good value for money and whether it was a quality product. We strongly welcomed the initiative by the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), when he was Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, of posing the question, "What do we want the higher education system to look like in 15 years' time?" That was exactly the right question, and I compliment him for beginning that debate.
	I wish to put on record that over the past 10 years, the higher education system has received a significant investment of resources, both in revenue and particularly capital. On the matter that the Select Committee on Science and Technology, as it now is, is particularly interested in, there has been huge investment in laboratory infrastructure and so on. I have started on a positive note, and I hope that the Minister has noted it.
	We considered whether the student experience is truly world-class, as it is often portrayed. Although fees and funding frequently came into our deliberations, they were not part of our brief, so I shall not comment on variable fees. The Committee looks forward to the report of the review by Lord Browne of Madingley, which should inform the debate after the general election.
	I pay tribute to the four members of the Select Committee who are present for the debate. I have to say that our inquiry and our final report have not been without controversy, and it is fair to say that our mailbag was not only large but contained extremely diverse responses to our recommendations. That is exactly what a Select Committee report should do-it should be able to create debate and, to some extent, controversy. I thank all those who contributed to the report, including vice-chancellors, academics and representatives of professional bodies. In particular, I wish to single out students. We met a great number who were an absolute pleasure to deal with, and I wish to put on record our appreciation to the National Union of Students, which constantly provided the Committee with high-quality evidence and was prepared to take on board a number of the criticisms that we made.
	The Committee actively sought out innovative ways to engage with students. We visited universities, and at Oxford we even had the equivalent of a speed-dating session, at which we spoke to a number of students in different formats. We also held a major consultation for three months as part and parcel of our work. We were rigorous in taking evidence, but it was controversial. I therefore wish initially to remove some misunderstandings.
	We had no intention of undermining what I and my Committee believe to be a world-class higher education system. Our criticisms are to try to improve it rather than undermine it. Given the rapid changes in the sector, which are likely to accelerate in future months and years, we wanted to add to the debate about the future of the sector. We were therefore somewhat surprised by the reaction of the Government and the higher education sector to our report. When it was published last August Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, was quoted in the press as saying that he did not "recognise the committee's description" of universities. The Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property, who is in his place, was equally scathing about the fact that we had produced a report during the summer recess, which I found quite strange.
	The Government echoed that line in their response to the report, stating at paragraph 1:
	"We believe that the picture of our higher education system which emerged in the report was far less positive than is in fact the case."
	Universities UK was equally hostile to the report. Indeed, many parts of the higher education establishment appeared largely defensive and reluctant to engage in many of the issues. They gave the impression that Parliament somehow had no right to interfere in the product being delivered, and that we should just let them get on with it. Given the fact that we have put in £15 billion of taxpayers' money, that attitude is frankly unacceptable.
	Over the past few months the Government and the higher education sector, having dismissed many of our concerns, have quietly been getting on with implementing most of the key recommendations in the report. Perhaps that is the way things are and how the system works. I hope that the Minister will explain why there has been a change of heart-perhaps the Government were planning it in the first place.  [Interruption.] I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams) does not have swine flu just before Christmas.
	I wish to deal with four matters, the first of which is the information available to prospective students, which is absolutely essential if they are to make informed choices about institutions and courses of study. We found that although universities' prospectuses competed on their public relations appeal, they did not present information in a consistent format to allow easy comparison. We concluded that the sector should develop a code of practice on information for prospective students, which should cover the time a typical undergraduate student should expect to spend attending lectures and tutorials, in personal study and, for science courses, in laboratories during a week, and a clear indication of who would be teaching them.
	The need for that information was brought home to us by a mature student doing a nursing degree, who pointed out:
	"Getting a clear idea of the hours involved and when lectures would be was incredibly important to me because of child care."
	The sector has seen a huge growth in the number of mature students-post 21-year-olds-and part-time students, and those who study specific modules at a variety of different sites, and they need to be able to plan with certainty.
	We did not recommend the standardisation of either courses or curricula. To do so would be to undermine university autonomy and academic freedom, and the core strength of our university system. To be fair, the Government responded fairly positively and agreed that it would helpful for prospective students to have access to information concerning work loads. They have asked the Higher Education Funding Council England to examine the issues, in consultation with the sector.
	By contrast, Universities UK appeared to see little need for change, stating:
	"Universities have already put significant resource into publishing information for prospective students".
	That is true, but they said that the problem was students' failure to navigate the information that was already there. We were therefore pleasantly surprised to see in HEFCE's statutory responsibility for quality assurance report, which was published in October this year, that its teaching, quality and student experience sub-committee considered that:
	"Institutions also clearly need to provide information in an appropriate common format. This should cover the nature and amount of staff contact that students may expect, the nature of the learning effort expected, the time this will take, and the academic support likely to be available."
	That is exactly what we had recommended in the report that was dismissed, so hallelujah! The Government, in their plan for the future of higher education, "Higher Ambitions", which was published in November, on which I compliment the Minister, state:
	"It is...important to ensure that potential students have the best possible information on the content of courses".
	We warmly welcome that.
	The second area our report covers is the treatment of part-time and mature students. The failure of the current system to treat part-time students on the same basis as full-time students is, in effect, a form of discrimination. That is not only wrong, but it hinders the achievement of the Government's objective of 40 per cent. of all adults in England gaining a higher education qualification by 2020.
	Although we did not take extensive evidence from part-time students, there was a strong feeling that although some universities actively welcome them and make appropriate curriculum provisions, many do not. In the latter, students have to take what are effectively full-time courses in part, rather than appropriately designed modules.

Phil Willis: I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman. That is why it is it is absolutely imperative for the review that is taking place to look at how we deliver higher education in totality and does not simply say, "Some students work part time and some work full time." We certainly need to consider that. I hope the Minister will tell us in his winding-up speech that that, and not simply funding, will be addressed in the review.
	We were disappointed that Universities UK did not address the matter in its response. To go back to what the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) said, one area we looked at in the inquiry was the delivery of modularised curricula, which means people can dip in and out over a longer period, accumulate credits and transfer them between universities. There were some very hostile reactions, particular from some in the Russell group of universities, which frankly did not participate in that more universal response.
	We were pleased, however, that in "Higher Ambitions", the Government stated:
	"In order to attract a greater diversity of students, more part time study, more vocationally-based foundation degrees, more work-based study...and more study whilst living at home must be made available."
	I think we are making progress-I put that on the record in a spirit of co-operation.
	The quality of teaching should be a core aspect of the undergraduate experience. It did not surprise us that the views of the students to whom we spoke ran the full gamut between complimentary and downright critical, but we were stunned by one constant criticism that came up time after time. One student said that
	"university lecturers seriously need to take lessons from school teachers on how to teach. They are clever"-
	that is a compliment-
	"but they are not skilled at conveying the message."
	That is quite a powerful thing to say. It would clearly be inappropriate to have an Ofsted-type approach to teaching quality in universities-I fully accept that and we do not recommend such an approach-but it is important that the Government and the higher education sector draw up and implement arrangements applicable across the sector that would allow students to convey concerns about poor teaching, and ensure that universities take quick remedial action. We should empower students in that way. The Government should require universities, as a condition of support from the taxpayer, to have in place programmes to improve teaching quality and the effectiveness of all academic staff-I do not think that that would interfere with their autonomy-and there should be a review of the common practice in universities of using graduate students to teach, albeit in view of the main academic staff. That concern, which was raised by many students, clearly needs to be addressed.
	The Government's initial response was lukewarm, but it is fair to say that successive Higher Education Ministers have pressed universities on that issue and made money available to improve teaching. Although the Government said that they believe
	"it is right that higher education institutions are responsible for ensuring their staff hold appropriate qualifications"-
	the Minister has asked HEFCE to explore with the sector whether human institutions' human resources strategies provide adequate information about their approach to staff professional development. We feel that the Minister needs to take the issue of improving teaching quality seriously.

Phil Willis: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. The reality is that we need to get a grip of the issue. We must not have teaching on the cheap. We would not get high-quality research on the cheap and we expect people to deliver those programmes, and that should apply to teaching.
	It was disappointing that Universities UK accepted none of the criticisms on teaching in universities. It said in its response:
	"In our experience, criticism of the quality of teaching and standards tends to be isolated and anecdotal, and not borne out by larger scale surveys such as the National Student Survey or the CBI survey of employers...nor the national data on complaints."
	None of those surveys asked those specific questions, so they did not get the answer. However, I am grateful to the Minister for recognising the quality of teaching is important and that we need to do something about it.
	The final area I wish to examine is standards. That issue has generated much heat in the media, though not as much light as I would have liked. In my view, a key role of a Select Committee carrying out an inquiry is to test the orthodoxies-a thankless task, but essential. The orthodoxies on standards in higher education as we perceived them are, first, that the UK's international reputation is of strategic importance, and I think that we would agree with that. Secondly, universities themselves have the responsibility for maintaining the standards of their awards -again, we agree. Thirdly, maintenance of standards is integral to universities' autonomy and that autonomy is the keystone of the sector. Fourthly, all universities have systems in place to ensure that courses are regularly reviewed and, fifthly, the Quality Assurance Agency conducts regular visits to universities to scrutinise how they maintain standards. Who could disagree? The system should therefore be perfect. However, what we found when we challenged those orthodoxies was a somewhat uncomfortable truth.
	We found that the system in England for safeguarding consistent national degree standards in higher education institutions is out of date, inadequate and in urgent need of replacement. With even the head of QAA describing the degree classification as "rotten" and "not fit for purpose", the issue needs to be taken seriously. The current arrangements with each university responsible for its own standards are perhaps no longer meeting the needs of a mass system of higher education in the 21st century with 133 higher education institutions and more than 2 million students.
	One statistic sticks out like a sore thumb. The proportion of first class and upper second class honours degrees has steadily increased over the past 15 years, with the proportion of students achieving first class honours rising from 7.7 per cent. in 1996-97 to 13.3 per cent. in 2007-08. There may be good reasons for that, such as better teaching, harder-working students or a metamorphosis in students' ability. However, there may be perverse reasons, such as universities inflating marks to keep their positions in the league tables. I hope that it is the former, not the latter. The short answer is that we do not know. That is the uncomfortable truth. Nor is there any appetite whatsoever to investigate the reasons for that significant degree inflation objectively.
	When we asked Universities UK about the increase in the number of first class honours, the answers we got would shame a first year student in statistics:
	"Universities UK acknowledged that there had been 'a lot of talk and publicity on this in the last six months or so, about degree classification', but told us that 'the patterns of degree classification have not changed all that much over the last ten years-only a six per cent rise in the percentage of Firsts and 2.1s'".
	Ministers appeared to take at face value explanations about grade inflation without detailed analysis. In fact the figures showed a steady increase in the proportion of first degree students achieving first class honours-an increase over the period of 72 per cent. That needs explaining, but rather than engage with the issue, it seems that everyone prefers to look the other way and hope for the best. Why? The defence is always university autonomy. I am talking here about institutional autonomy, not academic freedom.
	The Committee rightly dared to question the institutional autonomy of universities to set and maintain their own standards, not because we wanted to lead an onslaught on the autonomy of higher education, but because we found evidence that autonomy was, if anything, obscuring, if not undermining, quality and standards. As a Committee, we would defend vigorously the right of universities to maintain autonomy from the state and be the custodians of academic freedom. That is the unique strength of our university system and why it is admired around the world. But in return, universities must be able to provide clear, peer-reviewed evidence that that they are the true custodians of standards too. They cannot have it just one way.
	How we compare academic standards across different institutions is not easy, but to simply ignore the challenge is unacceptable. The evidence we received on assessment methodologies gave us serious grounds for concern. One witness told us that there is
	"considerable variation across the higher education sector in assessment practices. Whilst this can be seen as a consequence of institutional autonomy, the rationales for the various institutional choices that have been made are unclear".
	We established that quite small variations in the way in which degree classifications are determined can have more effect on the classification of some students than was generally realised. One academic told us that
	"my university runs what has been described as a very perverse model for classifying degree schemes. What happens is that low marks between 0 and 20 are rounded up to 20 and high marks from 80 to 100 are rounded downwards, and then they are averaged together, so you have this non-linear average before making a classification."
	If that is the basis on which we award degrees, something is wrong. There needs to be transparency and if the price of higher education organisational autonomy is a lack of transparency and inconsistent standards, we have to ask whether it is worth it?
	Two pieces of evidence that we took from students and during the inquiry gave us real concern. First, different levels of effort were required in different universities to obtain degrees in similar subjects, which might suggest that different standards may be applied. Secondly, we came across some pointers that students in England spend significantly less time studying, including lectures, contact time with academic staff and private study, than their counterparts overseas. Our visit to the US confirmed that. We made no conclusion about these variations other than to ask that more research be done to examine whether these factors affect quality. That is not an unreasonable thing to ask. Sadly the Government said that they were
	"not convinced of the usefulness of further...research".
	The only answer we were given by vice-chancellors, whose overseas market might be affected by declining quality, was that as international students continue to apply to our universities standards must be satisfactory. As we say in the report, we consider that it is
	"absurd and disreputable to justify academic standards with a market mechanism".
	Of course, the defence of standards by both the Government and sector was the existence of the Quality Assurance Agency. But we found that the QAA focuses almost exclusively on processes, not standards. That is why we called for the QAA to be transformed into an independent quality and standards agency with a remit to safeguard, monitor and report on standards. We did not seek some standardised format that could mechanistically be monitored by an Ofsted-type organisation. Instead, a quality and standards agency would take up the challenge of maintaining standards across the sector rather than simply within individual institutions.
	In reply the Government said:
	"The Quality Assurance Agency...does a good job but needs to take on a more public-facing role and one which allows any concerns about quality or standards to be investigated quickly, transparently and robustly."
	That misses the point. It is not better public relations that are required for the QAA, but a better examination of standards.
	In a discussion only two weeks ago, I was intrigued to hear the new chairman of the QAA, Anthony McClaran, outline a proposed consultation on key principles and processes for a revised quality assurance system He said that the purpose would be to provide authoritative, publicly accessible information on academic quality and standards in higher education; to command public, employer and other stakeholder confidence; to meet the needs of funders and of autonomous institutions; to meet the needs of students; and to reply on independent judgment. Hallelujah! That is exactly what we have called for. Quite frankly, I am not bothered whether it is called the quality and standards agency or the QAA, providing those issues are addressed.
	That was a useful exercise for the Committee to undertake and it pointed out several issues that need further discussion. The Committee recognised the strength of our higher education system and that to meet the needs of a 21st century, post-recession economy, the system has to work harder, better and to a higher standard than ever before. We have to compete with a US system and an Administration that has just put nearly an extra $1 trillion into higher education, and with China and India, which are putting untold wealth into producing not just widgets, but the highest intellectual quality. That is why we did the report and why we recommended it to the Minister. In that spirit, I hope that he will respond in an appropriately supportive way.

Eric Martlew: But I shall try not to mention Oxford United.
	I was elected MP for Carlisle in 1987. As a Cumbrian MP, I was faced with a particular challenge. More than 300 years ago, the area's application for a university was turned down because of our warlike neighbours, the Scots; it was thought inappropriate to have a university so close to the Scottish border, so it was put in Durham. People in Cumbria long took it for granted that they would not get a university, as a result of which so few of our young people actually went to university, and many of those who did, such as Lord Bragg of Wigton, Hunter Davies, Margaret Foster and Sir Brian Fender, the great educationist, did not return for many years. That meant the area was being drained of its talent, which we needed to bring prosperity.
	Soon after I was selected as a candidate, I went to a lecture by the vice-chancellor of Preston polytechnic, as it was then-it is now the university of Central Lancashire. He said that north Cumbria and south-west Scotland were the most deprived areas in western Europe in terms of higher education provision. When I was elected, therefore, one of the first things that I knew that we needed to do was to provide local people with the opportunity to study for a degree without having to leave home and to encourage others to study there.
	I am grateful to a good friend of mine, the noble Lord Glenamara, who was then chancellor of the university of Northumbria. Ted Short, as he was called when a Member of this House, was the Education Secretary who took the decision to locate the university in the north of England in Lancaster, not in Carlisle. As a Cumbrian, he always regretted having to do that, but I think that it was the fault of the local authority.
	I worked well with Lord Glenamara, and in 1992, we opened-he kindly asked me to open it with him-the Carlisle campus of the university of Northumbria in the historic quarter next to the cathedral. That was the first time people from my area and north Cumbria could get a degree in their own constituency. And it made a difference. I remember meeting a young girl who must have been in her mid-20s with a child of about eight-obviously, she had a baby very young-who was attending the university. She had a child to look after and was thrilled that she could do a degree and become a teacher. There was great satisfaction in that example.
	When Labour came to power, my area got a brand-new hospital-the first private finance initiative hospital to be built in this country. However, the old district general hospital, which was a listed building, had no use. That could have been a disaster, because listed buildings with no use are, in many ways, a menace, as I know well. However, St. Martin's college-one of the finest teaching-training colleges in Britain-which was looking to expand out of Lancaster, took over the old hospital. It is now a teacher-training section of the university of Cumbria.
	We had the critical mass of facilities needed to build the university of Cumbria. My noble Friend Lord Dale Campbell-Savours, who at the time was the Member of Parliament for Workington, proposed a university of the Lakes, which in some ways was meant as a virtual university, but at the end of the day it was not successful, and a traditional university was chosen instead. However, for many years, we had had a very good art college, which became the institute of art. We pulled those things together and two years ago we were able to say, "We have a university of Cumbria". That was a magnificent day for many of us-as I said, the area had waited 300 years-and, as hon. Members can I imagine, we were rather pleased.
	There is no doubt that the university has teething troubles. The buildings are spread throughout the county: it has two campuses in Carlisle; there is one in west Cumbria; another, called Newton Rigg-it used to be the old agricultural college-is out in Penrith; and there is a 115-year-old teacher-training college, Charlotte Mason college, in the Lake District at Ambleside. Those facilities were brought together, along with part of St. Martin's college in Lancaster, to create the university of Cumbria. We are well aware that we need the university if we are to attract talent and business, and to keep that talent. That has gone very well, and I am thankful to the Labour Government for that provision.
	There is, however, a difficulty about the location of the headquarters, which I think, being MP for Carlisle, and because it is by far the largest city in the area, should obviously be in the city of Carlisle. That was agreed, as too-finally-was the Caldew viaduct site, which I suggested many years ago. Everything was going well until the current economic problems. We now have an £8.4 million annual deficit and the capital moneys for the headquarters might no longer be available or its provision might be stalled. I find that puzzling, because as far as I am aware there has been no cut in the higher education budget, so it is not a question of the effect of the recession. Rather, there are obviously other issues at play, and over the past month or two the local media have highlighted the problems.
	I have talked about the campuses at Charlotte Mason in Ambleside and at Newton Rigg in Penrith. One of my concerns is about the talk of mothballing those campuses and moving a lot of the staff and the teachers to Lancaster-to return to the 1960s, that was when Cumbria lost out to Lancaster, which is now probably one of the top 12 universities in the country. However, the reality is that we cannot have a university of Cumbria, the majority of whose students are in Lancaster. That will undermine the whole process.
	I asked the new vice-chancellor-I sympathise with him, because he has not been in post very long-to come down on Monday afternoon to discuss the situation with Cumbrian parliamentarians from both Houses. I would like to ask the Minister, who is now in his place, whether he will have time after that meeting, probably early in the new year, to meet a delegation including myself and others to discuss the matter further. Although we have made great progress, we have a problem, and we have to come through it.
	I recognise that the university of Cumbria has to build its own reputation. I suspect that it might be many years before it has the reputation that Oxford has, but that is what we must try to achieve. We must try to improve the university. However, we will overcome the problem. The university has stalled, but it will continue; indeed, other great strides have been made during this time. Before 1997, we did not have any medical training whatever in Cumbria. We are now part of a medical school and are training medical students. We also have a campus of the new dental school based in Liverpool, so we have made amazing strides and we are looking forward to the future.
	What I would say to those hon. Members who take universities for granted is that there are parts of this country that have been deprived for centuries. We are getting over that, but we should not lose the impetus. We should continue to strive to make higher education available to as many people as possible.

Tim Boswell: I congratulate the Chairman, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), on introducing this debate and on his leadership of our Select Committees, which has been much appreciated. May I also commend the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew), who came into the House on the same day that I did in 1987? He has stuck up for his constituents and made an important point, to which I will obliquely return later.
	It occurred to me in preparing for this debate that it is almost exactly 17 years to the day since I became the Further and Higher Education Minister, in the then Conservative Government. And, for the record, it is now nearly 15 years since I stopped being that Minister. I realise that that is a mere blink of an eye in the history of institutions as venerable as Oxford, Cambridge and St. Andrews. Nevertheless, I am staggered by how many of the issues remain current. It is rather like the gentleman from Salamanca university in the late middle ages who was locked up by the Inquisition for five years and resumed his next lecture with the deathless words: "As I was saying yesterday".
	When I was doing the job as the Higher Education Minister, I was very much involved in higher education quality issues and issues of access to higher education. It would not be generally known, because it was private correspondence, but my first request through my private office on becoming Minister was for further information on the socio-economic background of participants in higher education at that time. One therefore should not feel that we are talking about a matter of interest to just one or two parties. It is remarkable to me, looking over that period, how little has changed with the institutions that we are dealing with-and in certain cases, the personalities we are dealing with. At the same time, however, the sector has undergone major expansion since the 1990s, which has been superimposed on the rapid expansion that began in the 1960s after the Robbins report and was accelerated in the 1980s, so that, in rough terms, we now have between 10 and 20 times as many students as in my days as an undergraduate.
	I suppose that we should declare any current interests. First, I was a member of the previous Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills. I signed the report and in no way do I resile from our conclusions. For the reason that the Chairman of that Committee has outlined, we needed to be pretty trenchant in what we said. As for my personal interest, I suppose that I should declare that I am a graduate of Oxford university, as we are well represented here. At the same time, my wife comes from an educational background in the Principality, as some hon. Members might be aware. I am also a governor of the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff. I say that not as some statement of virtue-although it is a hugely engaging, interesting and constructive job-but, I hope, as a validation of a certain range of interest in higher education across the piece.
	Anyway, it is far too late in my political career for any covert elitism or for making elaborate gestures against alleged dumbing down, or even any in favour of it. Nor am I particularly interested in megaphone diplomacy with Universities UK about alleged strengths and weaknesses. What seems practical is that we should recognise the strengths and find practical and useful ways of mitigating the weaknesses, always operating within the context of academic freedom and institutional autonomy. Even if we have been quite harsh and blunt as a Select Committee in some parts of our report and its press release, it is entirely proper that we have challenged some of the conventional wisdom and any element of defensive complacency. To quote from almost my first speech as an ingénu Minister, from about the first time that I was let out and considered safe enough to speak in public, "The days of the unaccountable professional are over". That was true in 1993, and it is still true.
	In relation to my work as a governor of the institution that I have mentioned, perhaps I might also advert the fact that I am particularly proud that one of the bits of our mission statement is that governors should act as the safeguards and guardians of the philosophy of dissent. It is terribly important, and entirely consistent with the principles and values of higher education, that we should have a debate about such matters. We should bring them out and not seek to push them under the carpet.
	I would like to begin my remarks by putting three points firmly on the record, in case they are misunderstood. The first point-I say this in no sense to soften up the opposition to our report or another view to it, wherever that might come from-is that the British university system, although not faultless, is an overall success story on almost all counts, including student numbers, which have already been referred to, and completions of degrees. We have a low drop-out rate and high participation and success. We have major international participation, which has also been referred to, and, at the same time, we sustain research excellence well above our weight. Some of the great continental universities-the Parises, the Bolognas and the Bonns of this world-have tended to fall behind simply because they have fallen victim to the coils of bureaucracy and inadequate resourcing.
	Last time I said something good about British higher education, it coincided with a lecture tour that I was giving in the states of the former East Germany. I delivered a speech in Halle, which was duly picked up by  The Times Higher Education Supplement, which gave me the headline-shock, horror!-"Minister goes the East Germany to say nice things about British higher education". However, it was and remains my view that those comments are appropriate.
	My second general point is that Kingsley Amis got it wrong when he said "More will mean worse." In my earlier days, I would perhaps have said that "More will mean different", and I would now modify that message only slightly to read "More means more diverse." To take my own institution, the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, as an example, we have just been under the hammer of the Quality Assurance Agency because of our application to be awarded research degree-awarding powers. We were awarded those powers on 7 September, and we are now proceeding with an application for university status and title. It was an intense process, involving the engagement of specialists, the entire academic body and the governance of the institution; it was no soft touch.
	However, obtaining those research powers does not preclude our institution from offering initial teacher training or being actively involved with further education colleges. It is not an either/or situation. Sometimes, when we talk about diversity in the system, we do not always recognise that it can exist not only across different institutions but within an institution, where different departments are doing particular things according to their own strengths.
	In any case, I do not think that it would be acceptable to revert to some kind of rosy, cosy myth of an Edwardian university, with donnish obscurity plus a few self-indulgent, privileged undergraduates. Even if we wanted to do that-I do not believe that anyone does-we could not, because there is now a huge stakeholding in higher education across society. The aspiration to get one's children into higher education has now become a kind of middle class entitlement. The issue is whether those from other classes and backgrounds can match that. In addition, a dynamic economy requires a significantly graduate population.
	The third issue that I want to mention is that of institutional autonomy. In evidence, Dr. John Hood, in particular, averted to the changing character of autonomy. As the Chairman has already said, our Select Committee attached importance to those observations. I am slightly sorry that the Government have rejected the idea of a concordat on this subject. Even if the Minister is not in favour of that, he needs to impose a self-denying ordinance above and beyond any legal constraints that he might have.

Tim Boswell: That, too, was a hugely helpful intervention. We are beginning to build up a picture. We really must stop telling people in higher education what they have to do, and leave them to make the right decisions. That is not meant as a threatening remark. If we are to implement reforms, they need to achieve buy-in from academics and institutions, whose confidence in the system we must retain, and whose self-confidence we must not subvert in the process. We do not want an infantilised HE system that is simply told what to do.
	Having cleared those preliminaries, I want to speak to three areas of policy. At first sight, they might seem disparate, but I believe that, when viewed from a wider perspective, they hang together. The first is the quality assurance system, to which the Chairman has already referred at length. As I have mentioned, I played a part in this. In some respects, it has come under increasing strain: first, conceptually, because it is still not clear from the evidence-it was not clear to me when I was a Minister-how we compare a first in one discipline with a first in another, or firsts obtained from different institutions. These are difficult "apples and pears" questions to respond to.
	Operationally, there is also a lack of clarity. We need to be aware that there is a temptation, or a tendency, towards upwards academic drift, about which we have already heard. At one end, that might involve the Russell group, with its higher proportion of firsts; the other end might involve some of the hairier anecdotes that we pick up and occasionally hear in evidence about courses that have been "stuffed".
	I know from our own work that there are some interesting dilemmas between the extent to which one should try to get people in for access reasons-through clearing, for example, and by other means-as against the maintenance of standards. It is an interesting question: do we want the proportion from clearing to rise, to remain at the same level, or to drop? The answer is not necessarily the same for all institutions.
	We need to achieve a system that delivers more perceived autonomy and that also has more teeth to deal with cases of alleged failure. We have also heard examples of that. We have allies in this matter, and, in some respects, things are easier than they used to be. We now have the national students survey, which I welcome. We also have local student feedback. We must bear in mind that students are now stakeholders, because they are paying fees. I know that some universities are concerned about people going to a TripAdvisor-type system and rating their professor, as happens in some American institutions. I do not think that we could stop that. My own family would certainly use TripAdvisor to check out a hotel, and I do not think it unreasonable for someone to check out their professor as well, as long as they did not take everything that they read on such feedback sites literally.
	As Universities UK mentioned in its response, money spent on quality assurance has opportunity costs. The Government's proposed cuts in the higher education budget are likely to drive a wish to achieve value for money, but we need to ask how much money we should spend in order to save money. I would be inclined to go against the message from the Select Committee and give the external examiner system one last chance. If we were to do that, we would need some kind of external, central involvement in spot-checking, outside the system, perhaps involving inserting an extra examiner from time to time.
	I would also like to see some international participation. People will immediately comment that no one other than ourselves has an external examiner system. That might be true, but if such a system is a virtue for us, it could be educational for us to have someone coming over from Bonn university, or Rimini, or wherever. It could also be a useful way of cross-checking our own achievements. Are we as good as we think we are? That is the question that we have to keep asking. Our potential students will also ask it, whether they come from the United Kingdom or abroad. As the new chief executive of the Quality Assurance Agency, Anthony McClaran, has already reported, there are signs that the agency will place greater emphasis on institutional audits, as well as the alternative route of cause for concern inquiries. This is perhaps the more fruitful area for levering up standards.
	I have mentioned the great efforts that my institution had to make to get itself accredited for research degree-awarding powers. The logic is that institutions should go through a re-accreditation process in a way that would be quite familiar to American universities, up to and including Harvard. I am not sure that we need to go that far, but I believe that there needs to be a slight element of precariousness in degree-awarding powers. They are bestowed, but they should also be able to be suspended or withdrawn with good cause.
	It is perhaps ironic that I am leaning towards a two-tier structure with a re-introduction of some of the old distinctions between HEFCE as the funding council and the Higher Education Quality Council, which was run by the academic world, before the two in effect came together in the QAA. I acknowledge that the taxpayer has a perfectly proper interest in seeing that the £15 billion of public funds are well spent and that students are getting degrees with at least a minimum threshold standard, while the institutions operate to proper and internationally acceptable standards of academic commitment and governance. I want to emphasise the need for governance to be coincident with the academic effort. If governors are not talking to the academic board, they should be.
	Beyond that threshold issue, or above it, the academic world itself both wants and claims to be able to manage a quality assurance system within its own institutions and by reference and audit across. This needs to be academically driven and focused on meeting quality standards. That needs largely to be influenced not so much by some comparison with a Platonic norm, as by compliance or otherwise with the academic goals and aspirations set by the institution itself including what it asks of and or promises to deliver to its student body. I am not so interested in a sort of Gertrude Stein-ish "A first is a first is a first" as a definition of common quality standards. I am interested in the double questions: in a degree from a certain university, first, is there something that has currency-the national interest test-and, secondly, does the course meet the needs and aspirations of students, which is the user test?
	That brings me to qualifications. Part of the enhanced diversity to which I referred is the explosion of activity at all levels. In my days as an undergraduate, it would almost have been possible to claim no acquaintance with mature students at all and not very much with graduates. Now the whole system has opened up, with huge participation in higher degrees, mature students and part-time students, all on different courses and with their activities co-existent. These may range, for example, from diplomas and foundation degrees, which I now feel, having been an earlier sceptic, are one of the better innovations of the present Government, through, first, undergraduate degrees-the classic degree-to taught masters' degrees and doctorates. Remember also the huge range of opportunities for short courses and continuing professional development qualifications. My own institution is quadrupling its CPD effort over the next few years.
	I am sure that we are right to call for a closer look at the integration or at least the concentration of policy between further and higher education and more generally within the framework of post-compulsory education and lifelong learning. We need to drop what I used to characterise as "Go at 18 for three years and you're out", and develop a much more flexible framework to meet the needs of students, including those returning to study after a break and, of course, those in remote parts of the country to whom the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) referred; Cornwall is the same sort of issue. We need to meet the needs of employers, and they operate in localities as well.
	Into this area falls the need for better transcripts of actual attainment rather than the current classification system that no longer seems fit for purpose; we have been told that as if we did not need to work it out for ourselves. We need a properly functioning credit system that carries credibility and is accepted, and a proper national record of achievement. I sometimes ask myself why we got that far by 1993 but have got no further forward since. As academics would certainly say, Rome was not built in a day, but all of this agenda has been, to my knowledge, at least 20 years in the gestation.
	Finally, I want to refer to students themselves. They are now a major force in society, even in politics, and, very largely, a force for good, both now in their student days but also as developed and empowered citizens as graduates. Certainly those we met during our evidence gathering gave an excellent account of themselves and, in doing so, revealed the diversity of roots and backgrounds that now characterise the sector.

Barry Sheerman: Does my hon. Friend accept that the House deserves to know whether the student he mentioned got a first at the end of his degree? Secondly, he will remember that when he and I were university teachers, new ways of teaching and learning might have arrived, but we were not taught or given any instruction about how to teach.

Brian Iddon: In my time, we did not differentiate between the three areas of teaching, administration and research. We had to do a bit of each, but that has declined in universities. People who can produce papers give their university a good reputation, and ironically the universities think-and I do too-that that attracts better students. Research has always been given a lot more importance than teaching, and that is even more true today. That is a shame, and I agree with my hon. Friend.
	Our report also deals with contact times: when students are able to meet their teachers in the lecture theatre or the tutorial room. They vary enormously from one university to another, even within the same subject. At some universities and in some subjects, the contact times amount to about six or seven hours a week only. What are we teaching students? I used to have friends who believed that they could ignore lectures-they could not ignore practicals, which they had to attend-and still get a good degree. There are not many of those people around, of course, but I think that six or seven hours a week is a poor level of contact time in any subject. We must remember that we are looking for value for money. Some students pay full fees, so "value for money" is an important phrase-sadly, in my opinion.
	In yesterday's pre-Budget report, a £600 million cut in the budget for higher education and science was announced, which the supporting papers say is to apply to "lower-value or lower-priority" programmes. I am not sure what that means, and if my hon. Friend the Minister can help us this afternoon, I am sure that many people in the academic system would be pleased.
	Our report also talks about portable credits, another matter that has to do with access. The university of Bolton, which I represent, has one of the best access programmes of any university in Britain. The trouble at the other end, by the way, is that it has one of the worst drop-out rates. It gets praised for its access, but criticised for its drop-out levels. We really have to address that problem, and our report suggests a way out-the introduction of portable credits.
	I have talked to many students who have studied both part time and full time at my local university. Some of them have to drop out for all kinds of reasons. For example, a student may have to drop out to take over a business when there is a death in the family. Again, women may have to leave to have children, or wives or husbands may have to follow their partners to another town when that partner gets a new job. Consequently, the students have to drop out of their local university course.
	For a lot of people, particularly in communities such as mine, it is very difficult to stay at university and get a full-time, three-year degree. It is almost impossible for many. Part-time study is a boon for them, but even that can be difficult: people might have to drop out of even part-time study for a thousand and one reasons.
	The report encourages universities to give credits for every part of the courses that students do, so that people can take the credits from one university to another, or even come back into the same university a few years later. We have to look at that if we are really serious about ensuring access to universities and degrees.
	I have to congratulate the Government, as the infrastructure in universities today has improved tremendously. I am on the external advisory board of Manchester university's school of chemistry, and I visit quite regularly. The transformation of that university in the last decade has been so spectacular that I have not been able to believe what I have seen on my visits. I congratulate the Government on putting a lot of money into the infrastructure. I have even opened new laboratories that are state of the art.
	Incidentally, one of the criticisms that industry often makes of students of STEM subjects concerns the university laboratories where we train them in techniques and instrumental procedures. If those laboratories are not as good as the industrial laboratories where they will work when they graduate, we are wasting our time. When this Labour Government first came into power, I am afraid that the instruments and laboratories were out of date. Industry was very critical of undergraduates' lack of experience when they started work, and it had to start training them from scratch. That situation has improved tremendously.
	Our report also looks at international students. As I have said already, they are a tremendous boon in our universities because they give students a rounded experience. Some universities rely a lot more than others on attracting international students and if they could not come here in their present numbers, those universities would suffer badly. We should never forget that, so I just want the Government to be a bit cautious about the fees that international students are charged. It is not just about money. It is about having them here to interact with our own students, so money is not everything.
	The report recommended a national bursary scheme, but sadly the Government have rejected that idea. There is a lot of competition now between universities, which have formed themselves into bodies such as the millennium plus group and the Russell Group. That suggests that competition is going on, which is not altogether a bad thing. However, it would be a sad thing if some universities were able to give more and better bursaries than others. I agree with the report's conclusion that we should have a national bursary scheme, and I hope that my Government will have another look, please, at that proposal.
	I have a very favourable attitude to the TRAC approach-the transparent approach to costing, which reveals the true costs of teaching and of research. There is some overlap, but there will always be a grey area in the middle, and it is very important to know how much we are spending on teaching across the departments of each university, and between one university and another. That has been another big step forward.
	I shall finish by dealing with the Government's response to our report. They said that we painted a picture of our HE system in a less than positive light. I am sorry if we did that, because none of the Committee members who took part in these investigations wanted to paint our university system in a poor light. I think that I indicated through my concluding points that tremendous progress has been made all round-in admissions and in infrastructure. This country is still producing some of the best university students in the world at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and long may that remain so.

Stephen Williams: This has been an excellent debate, although I am not sure that I want to put a classification on it. I enjoyed the thoughtful and good-natured contribution made by the hon. Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson). I also enjoyed the speech made by the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon), who talked about his journey across the Pennines to Hull; I was reminded of my own journey across the Severn estuary, with the valleys-boy accent that I had at the time, to the strange world of Bristol university, where I met different classes of people whom I had never come across before.
	This debate shows Parliament at its best, because it is based on a Select Committee report that is an example of Parliament at its best. During my first two and a half years as a Member, I thoroughly enjoyed serving on the Committee that preceded the now former Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis). Select Committee reports make an important contribution. I wish that we had more opportunities such as this to debate the thorough research and evidence-based reports that Select Committees produce.
	Yesterday's pre-Budget report provides a context, and it has already been mentioned by a couple of speakers. On page 110, among a series of bullet points covering cuts in IT, the criminal justice system, residential care and rail franchises, is tucked away a reference to anticipated cuts in higher education:
	"£600 million from higher education and science and research budgets from a combination of changes to student support within existing arrangements; efficiency savings and prioritisation across universities, science and research".
	The Minister has already been asked to provide several bits of information when he sums up; I hope that he will clarify what that £600 million-worth of cuts means. I am thinking particularly of student support, which has been on a roller coaster in the past 12 years. Grants were first abolished, then reintroduced. Provision was then extended, but clawed back 12 months ago. I hope that there will not be a further roller coaster ride for students.

Stephen Williams: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Students in their third year may already have a completely different financial scenario from what prevailed when they applied; not only that, but students from the same families who are assessed on family income may also experience entirely different outcomes. Brothers and sisters doing the same thing may have different grants or eligibility for maintenance loans.
	Will the Minister also clarify what the cuts in science and research will be? The Chancellor said in yesterday's pre-Budget report that science, innovation and a low-carbon economy were the way forward for this country, and Lord Mandelson has said much the same. It would be perverse if all that were now undermined by budget cuts.
	The hon. Member for Reading, East mentioned the report on the Student Loans Company by Professor Sir Deian Hopkin, which came out on 8 December. It is a particularly damning report, and it is strange that there has been no sign of contrition on the part of the directors of the Student Loans Company. I remind the House that these people actually paid themselves a bonus last year, when they should have been preparing for their new responsibilities for this year. Will the Minister clarify his and his Department's responsibilities in this respect? Will he undertake, at least between now and the election-I am not necessarily predicting what will happen then- to closely follow the progress of the directors of the Student Loans Company to ensure that we do not have a repeat of this fiasco and that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough mentioned, further grants are paid on time?

George Young: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. There has just been an extraordinary statement in the upper House concerning the eligibility of Members of the upper House to sit there. It has come to light that, as a consequence of the Electoral Administration Act 2006, there is now some doubt about whether Commonwealth and Republic of Ireland citizens are eligible for membership of the House of Lords. There are also implications for certain other offices under the Crown, as well as for membership of the Privy Council and judicial officer holders. The eligibility of Commonwealth citizens to be employees of the civil service is also in some doubt.
	We have just had the most recent business statement of the Session, yet no reference was made to that announcement. May I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether you have had any indication from the Leader of the House that she plans to share with the House the Government's proposals to legislate in the current Session, in order to clarify the position and avoid any doubt about the eligibility of those citizens to be members of the upper House and to continue to hold certain other offices?

David Lammy: I can confirm that I do not anticipate there will be any changes in respect of students who have already entered the system. May I also put on the record our commitment to the science ring fence, and to our framework?
	On the Student Loans Company, Members have described the difficulties that students have experienced with the system this year. I have previously apologised for that, and I am happy to do so again today. It is entirely right, however, that my focus should have been not on scapegoats or scalps but on setting up the review, which I did promptly, and on acting promptly in other ways when this situation was first brought to my attention in September, as well as on ensuring that the SLC got extra resources at that time to deal with the court problem. I also focused on ensuring that there was an extra contact centre and that a greater volume of calls were answered, and I joined with Sir Deian Hopkin in saying that the No. 1 priority was to ensure that the lessons are learned, so that there can be significant progress as we move forward to next year's cycle.
	The SLC chair has already said that its senior management team will be strengthened and reorganised. As it was the Administration of the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) who set up the SLC, I hope he will recognise that it is a private organisation, so these matters must be for the new chair-he is a new chair-and the board to consider. Over the next short while, they must, through due process, determine how best to strengthen and reorganise the body. It is right that that should not be within the purview of Ministers.
	We must look forward, and my Department must learn from this exercise in relation to its responsibilities. I am absolutely clear about that. That is why we are happy to consider more closely both risk management and the escalation of such problems up the SLC to the board and on to the Department. There have been problems, but it is clear from the strategic framework document that governs the SLC that the Department's ambit is strategic. It cannot be right for Ministers to micro-manage the processing of student loan claims. Of course I will act in relation to that one recommendation of the report, but the most important thing Sir Deian recommended was that stakeholder management and the customer experience should be much more centre stage in the SLC's operation. We have set up a new stakeholder forum on which Universities UK and the National Union of Students is represented. We want to ensure that we do not have again the problems we have had this year, and that those interests have a voice and are communicating with the board and senior management.
	I remain particularly concerned about the situation for students with disabilities. It is always the case in a post-qualification application process that students with disabilities take longer to go through the assessment process, having presented their medical certification and other things, and to be assessed for the equipment they need. I was at the London assessment centre yesterday, and I spoke to staff there about the nature of that process. We currently have many such students-5,000-in the system, and there is an onus to take matters forward, but I have asked the SLC to ensure that universities are ringing around and that it is making contact with those students to ensure they move through the system.

Phyllis Starkey: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall try and moderate what I say to make sure that there is ample space for other Members.
	I want to begin by setting the scene for the report from the Communities and Local Government Committee on the balance of power between central Government and local government. Over several decades, the pattern in this country seems to have been that of a pendulum swinging backwards and forwards. First it lurches towards centralism, then it swings back in the other direction towards localism before swinging back towards centralism again. The overall trend in the past century has been towards a reduction in the numbers of elected people, if one takes all levels together and excludes MPs, and there has also been a substantial reduction in the powers of local government. However, although that has been the overall trend, the pendulum has undoubtedly swung the other way too. Those of us who were in local government before we came to this place will certainly have experienced times when local government was even more constrained than it is at present.
	I think that we need to be aware that the pendulum that I have described exists. At the moment, it seems to me that there is a willingness-or at least an expressed willingness-among all the political parties to lurch towards localism, and away from centralism. The Select Committee's report is therefore extremely timely, in that it looks at what it considers to be appropriate ways to give more power to local government and ensure that we have a much less centralised process.
	Those hon. Members who have read the report will be aware that, in coming to our view, we took evidence from a number of witnesses, and that we also visited Denmark and Sweden. We made that visit because local government in those countries has a lot more freedom than is the case here, and also runs a wider range of services. It was interesting to see their system in operation and to discover that it was not quite as localised and free from central control as perhaps one might have thought from looking from the outside.
	I also ought to make the point that we have received the Government's response to many of the recommendations in our report, but we agreed with the Government that we did not want their response to all of them, because at that point they were still consulting on some of the changes that they had proposed. We felt it would be inappropriate for the Government to say either that they had not come to a view and would do so at the end of the consultation or that they had come to a view when the public consultation was still going on-that would have looked somewhat odd. We have received only a partial response, but that was by agreement and we hope that the final response, including the Government's response to the public consultation, will be given at the end of this month.
	I wish to go through a few of the main points in the report to set the scene. First, I wish to restate that, notwithstanding the swings back and forth in the relationship between local and central Government in England-of course, the report was considering only the arrangements in England-we have one of the most centralised systems in the whole of Europe. We discovered as we were undertaking our investigation that this is not simply a matter of local government and central Government imposing controls; it is about a whole culture in this country of centralism. We feel that that manifests itself in the way in which even though there has been a lightening up of the controls, some councils have been backward about pushing the margins and taking on the freedoms that they have. It is as if they have got into a culture of waiting for direction from the centre, even when they have the freedom to do more.
	The culture of centralism certainly affects the public at large. If they were asked whether they would like more decisions to be taken locally, they would generally speak in favour of that, yet they complain if there is any variation between the service delivered by their own council and that delivered by the one next door-this is the so-called "postcode lottery". Of course, there cannot be increased freedom and flexibility for local councils without variations in outcome. Therefore, the public are in a bit of a schizophrenic mood about whether they really want their local council to have the freedom to decide on the level and standard of services or whether they would prefer central Government to lay down standards and their local council to be held to them.
	This is also about the press and the media. The example that we cited over and over in our report was the baby P case in Haringey. I do not want to get into the details of that but, in essence, as soon as it happened, horrific though the case was, it was being discussed in Parliament, the Opposition were requiring Ministers to respond and Ministers felt that they had to respond. However, in reality, the case involved a failure at the local level on the part of the council, and the police and the local health service-they are the ones who should be held to account. The local councillors and the local council officials are the ones who should have been put on the spot by the media and by the people in the borough concerned; they should not have gone to central Government level to take people to task. Our colleagues in Sweden and Denmark said that that would not have happened in their countries; if there was a comparable case in those countries, the national press would not demand that the Secretary of State stand up to comment.

Phyllis Starkey: Or change her mind, indeed.

Paul Beresford: I think that in the light of the earlier point of order I should explain that although I am an ethnic minority immigrant from the Commonwealth, I am also a British national. Safety first! No comments about going back, please.
	The Chairman of the Committee has ambled all the way through the report, so I will make my speech somewhat shorter. The inquiry looked into the long-standing sources of conflict between central Government and local government. I found it particularly interesting given my history of being both poacher and gamekeeper-or, as some would say, poacher and poacher.
	In many ways, local government acts on behalf of central Government; to some degree, it subcontracts to central Government. The situation is very similar in most western democracies. It is therefore understandable that central Government would wish for some measure of control over local government. Again, that applies in most western democracies. The interest and concern arises in relation to the degree of that control. In England, central Government control is clearly excessive, in my belief, and it has increased markedly since 1997. The minutiae of control was imposed from very early on following the 1997 election. When I served on the Committee that considered the "best value" Bill, which became the Local Government Act 1999, I saw these measures being introduced with a very heavy hand. There was monitoring, audits and reports from local government to Government Departments-not just the Department for Communities and Local Government, as the Chairman of the Committee pointed out, but other Departments. In those days, of course, the DCLG was the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The best value legislation is notorious among councils, because it gave the Secretary of State the power to take over local authorities, literally.
	Since 1997, councils have been loaded with targets to meet and judgments from the Government on quality, many of which have been based more on process than service quality. The current Secretary of State justified that under questioning by the Committee by saying that he believed the majority of councils in 1997 were of poor quality. He is possibly right; after all, the greatest proportion of councils in 1997 were Labour-controlled.
	Hand in hand with councils struggling to manage with those central instructions, inspections and so on have come costs, which are moved on to the council tax payer. There has been a huge rise in council tax since 1997, with little change in the number of services provided. Much of it has been imposed as a result of Government audits and so on. For example, one local authority in my area is a tiny one called Mole Valley district council. A couple of years back, its comparative performance assessment was undertaken. It was a huge event for the council, and its officers, particularly its senior officers, worked on it for weeks beforehand and for the time that the auditors were there. To some degree, the council stalled as a result. It cost it £250,000, but because of gearing it cost the council tax payer £1 million, for little or no gain that I can see.
	As I mentioned, one of the biggest bones of contention for local authorities is the myriad targets, and the Government have latterly accepted that there are too many. It has been a source of amusement to see the pride of various Secretaries of State as they have announced with an air of smiling benevolence that the number of targets would be reduced, ignoring the fact that the mountain of targets was put in place by either them or their predecessors in the first place. I suppose one could call it "grand old Duke of York syndrome"-march us up the pile of targets and then march us down again.
	The problem, which the Committee Chairman touched on, is that although the DCLG cut the raw number of targets, a number of them were amalgamated so that there was no actual diminution. As she pointed out, other Departments went on loading on new targets. Certain freedoms have been announced recently, often with a flourish, such as in capital borrowing. However, that freedom is not really in place, because although in theory councils can borrow with much greater freedom, there is still a tight rein on grant and council tax, and therefore on the revenue side of capital. Even worse, the Government have taken away many local authorities' capital receipts and redistributed them elsewhere.
	At face value, there are now only 198 national indicators. As I said, however, there are sub-indicators within them, so that figure does not give a true picture. The inspection regime has changed, and instead of concentrating on quality of service and value for money it is moving into other areas such as-I could not believe this-inspecting work force management. Councils that like to test the market for service providers are now crippled by legislative changes that make it virtually impossible for them to do that properly. Such action is now essentially a waste of money, particularly for councils with in-house services, because the system set up in law cripples potential private competitors.
	For decades, local councils have worked with partners-that is the buzz word and has been for a long time-which may be private sector contractors or other public sector bodies such as the national health service and the police. I remember that before I came into the House, such partnerships were used by most of the local authorities that I knew well without mandatory statutory imposition from the Government. Now the Government are getting in on the act and setting up regulated, mandatory local strategic partnerships. They appear to have rules of engagement and require detailed assessment, with the usual flags of so-called performance all going on to a website that claims to grade councils from "good" to "poor". Once again, valuable senior council officers will spend hours of valuable time rushing around, tailed by Audit Commission officers, ticking boxes that are more about process than the situation on the ground that the public would like. To make matters worse, many of those partnerships are now going to be tied into a system that does not reflect the fact that different partners may have different, conflicting priorities. Those should, but will not, be reflected in the flags that go on the appropriate website.
	There is a marked contrast between Ministers' and local governments' view of the balance power. In fact, the tail end of paragraph 28 of the report puts that in a moderate and generous way:
	"There remains a sizeable gap between the newly empowered local government that the Government believes it has established in principle, and the actual impact as witnessed at the local level."
	That summarises the essence of the report. It is about time-long overdue-that central Government, whichever party is in control, gets off the back and out of the pocket of local government.

Clive Betts: I will accept the hon. Gentleman's point, but the Government of the time, as a whole, had a certain approach to local government-they sought either to control it completely or to ignore it altogether. I certainly remember a White Paper on urban regeneration, which Nicholas Ridley, the then Minister, introduced, that did not mention local government at all, as though it was not relevant to local people and the places in which they lived.
	The Committee also took evidence in Denmark and Sweden. It is true that inherently, all parliamentary democracies are centralised, in that Parliament is ultimately sovereign-it can choose either to use powers itself or to devolve them to other organisations. The fact is that Denmark and Sweden have chosen to devolve more powers to local and regional government. Obviously, those countries have different histories and cultures, so we cannot simply replicate what happens there in this country, but they offer examples of how parliamentary democracies, with Parliament remaining sovereign, can ensure that more decisions are genuinely taken at local level by local elected representatives.
	As I said, there has been some improvement. The attitude in the DCLG has definitely improved. The approach of giving city regions more powers is a welcome step forward, and the reduction in the inspection regime and trusting local government more is helpful. Other positive steps forward include the changes that the Housing Minister is considering with regard to the housing revenue account, but an awful lot remains to be done.
	We could look at how devolution in Scotland and Wales has been achieved. I certainly do not argue for, and I have never been supportive of, trying to replicate that sort of devolution in the regions in England, which are generally administrative conveniences and not real areas in the sense of being economic entities. I am much more supportive of giving powers to city regions on such matters. In the end, what matters to local people more than anything is their local council because they can see the things that local councils do-they are immediate to people. Councils are about sweeping the streets, the care of the elderly and local education provision. They are concerned with important local matters that affect people's daily lives.
	In a healthy democracy, local councillors have to be allowed to respond to the needs of their local population. If they did not have that power and people felt that they were voting for representatives who were powerless and impotent and only there to do what central Government said, we would have an unhealthy democracy and people would get very frustrated and become very cynical. It is important for the health of our democracy that we get real power and responsibility down to local councillors. If we are to do that, we have to examine the whole issue of powers and how they fit within our constitution. Our constitution is, of course, unwritten, which does not make it easy to amend in the way that countries such as Sweden and Denmark can amend theirs. We also have to consider the issue of finance and the constant urge that Ministers have to interfere.
	One reason why we have so many projects, so much central Government direction and so many grants for different items is that every single one is a photo call and a press release for the relevant Minister. Ministers can be seen to be doing things. Instead of saying to local government, "Here's the settlement for the year, and you can raise most of the money for yourself by various means", Ministers like to be seen to be doing things and to be involved. That is why they do not keep their hands off what are essentially local issues, and that affects the whole relationship between central and local government.
	Establishing the principle of subsidiarity is important. Both Front-Bench teams are talking about moves towards a new localism and accepting the principle of subsidiarity. I have two examples that demonstrate that, whatever the general principles are to which those on the Front Benches want to sign up, in practice they cannot resist taking a view on what should happen at local level. First, I am slightly worried by the care proposals that the Government are putting forward. If they are moving towards a national care service, does that mean that local councils will no longer have the freedom to deliver particular services in particular ways to people in their community? I do not know the answer, but if that is the case, I am worried that another whole section of local government services will be controlled and determined by a Minister, with local government simply as a delivery agent. That is not helpful for local democracy.
	Secondly, we have just passed legislation that allows local transport authorities to decide whether they want to move to quality contracts. indeed, we have just had a notice from the Secretary of State today that the regulations giving extra powers to do that have been laid. I welcome that legislation because it will give the choice back to local communities through their elected transport authority members about how to run bus services in their local area. I have just put a survey out in my constituency asking people what they think about local bus services and this move, and I have already had more than 2,500 responses. That is a staggering response rate and it shows that people are interested and want to have a say. However, I understand that it is the policy of the Conservatives not to allow that and, if they get into power, to reverse the legislation. That is unfortunate and it goes against the grain of the principles of local democracy that they talk about.
	I accept what has been proposed in terms of a power of general competence. It probably is better than the current powers of well-being, but of itself it probably does not go far enough. It fits in with the general thrust of the Lyons report that all that we have to do is to give local authorities a bit more power to prioritise the services in their area and that will be a significant step forward. Yes, it would be a step forward, but it is not sufficient. I would like to go further.
	We have had the central local concordat, but it has hardly sparked the imagination of the British people or fostered a real debate about local democracy. Can anyone in the Chamber explain what is in the concordat? It is a secretive piece of work hidden away in some ministerial drawer-and probably in a Local Government Association drawer too. It ought to be pretty important, but instead this piece of paper has been signed, pushed to one side and forgotten about.
	The report also mentions the European charter of local self-government, which is supposed to be in the constitution of every country that signs it. Obviously this country does not have a constitution in quite that form, but we do have constitutional law, and there is no reason why the central-local concordat and the European charter should not be put on a statutory basis. Why not go that far? If the Government believe in what they have signed, they should put it in statute. Then we could turn to the Joint Committee of both Houses that my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West suggested. It would be akin to the Human Rights Committee and could examine every piece of legislation that comes before the House to see whether it fits in with those two measures and the principle of subsidiarity.
	Such a Committee would be a very healthy check, not just on the DCLG, which has signed up to the general principle and wants to get moving, but on other Departments that have not got the message. As my hon. Friend said, when we had before us witnesses from other Departments, they did not appear to get the message about local democracy. They seemed almost frightened of local government and of ceding any powers to it. Nominally, under the national health service, the Secretary of State is responsible for everything that happens in every part of the country in the health service. Clearly, that is nonsense, but legally it is where we are at. Let us put those measures into law and use them as a base from which to monitor all legislation from every Department.
	As my hon. Friend said, in the report we suggested that powers could be devolved to local authorities. We could run pilot schemes under which, where local authority and primary care trust boundaries are coterminous, local authorities could become PCTs. That was a cross-party suggestion. I chaired another inquiry for the all-party group on local government, and Lord Hanningfield, the leader of the Tory-controlled Essex county council, supported that suggestion and said that Essex would volunteer to be one of the pilot councils.
	There is great enthusiasm for joining up the commissioning of local health services-not the running of hospitals-with the local authority care services, not through the central mechanism of a national care service alongside a national health service, but by allowing things to be done locally. Of course, we will need local standards, and my hon. Friend is right about that. However, the public and politicians suffer from an element of schizophrenia in that no one wants a postcode lottery, but everyone wants local freedoms. Yet with local freedoms, different things will be done in different parts of the country. We just have to accept that. Central Government probably has a right to set minimum standards that everyone must follow, but some of the best services and service creation happen when people are free to develop and innovate at a local level and when other areas copy them and move on, rather than when central Government choose to be prescriptive from the beginning. That is the challenge.
	We face a further challenge. We might be interested in local democracy, but it is not about creating more and more bodies, all of which appoint members through direct elections-directly elected police and health authorities, for instance-because that does away with the ability of local communities to choose their priorities. Local councils are elected and have a variety of responsibilities. They can make choices, based on their electorates and their manifesto priorities for different services, unlike what can be achieved by a series of directly elected bodies that cannot move resources between themselves.
	One current criticism of the arrangements for local and multi-area agreements is that, although other Departments' officials often come to the table to join in the debate, they all do so with terms of reference dictated to them by their Departments. We do not get a real joining-up or ability to switch resources to different priorities, because each Department insists that its resources be spent on its services. That presents some challenges and some interesting ideas.
	In the end we return to the issue of finance, which lies at the heart of much that we want to achieve. We can give local authorities the powers of general competence and sign up to as many agreements as we want, but in the end if central Government control 75 per cent. of the funding directly, it is a case of, "He who pays the piper, calls the tune." The Lyons report bottled out on one really important matter, although the Government's response was even weaker: how do we give more fundraising powers back to local councils? It seems obvious that re-localising the business rate is the way forward and would alter the balance between local and central Government to about 50:50.
	Of course we need an element of central Government funding to deal with disparities in wealth, income and resources between one area and another. However, the calculations that we had done for the Committee in the past suggested that that element need only be about 30 per cent. of overall local government expenditure. Although Sweden has fewer disparities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West said, 70 per cent. of local authority expenditure in Sweden is raised locally, so a 30 per cent. target ought to be one that we should try to achieve.
	We probably need a local income tax element as a top-up, but I would warn hon. Members about that. We have to be careful about a local income tax for authorities that are not allowed to borrow for revenue purposes. Hon. Members should talk to authorities in the United States and even state governments, which are currently in the most awful financial difficulties-I recently visited the Pennsylvania state government. Of course they rely on a local income tax and local sales tax, but as authorities that cannot borrow, they are making massive cuts in their budgets in this recession, so let us not get to the point where a local income tax is the only tax that local authorities rely on. Local councils in this country would be in a complete mess if we implemented Liberal Democrat policy as I think it stands, although I am not absolutely certain about that. We have to be careful on that one.
	I also welcome the fact that central Government are now moving away from ring-fenced grants, so that grants can at least be spent as local authorities wish. That is right. We had an inquiry into the supporting people programme, and people have concerns when the comforts of ring-fencing are removed, but it is right that such decisions are made locally. I remember having discussions about local government finance in the Committee some years ago when Ministers said, "Of course we want to remove ring fences". However, a few days later-this takes us back to different Departments doing different things-the Education Department, as it then was, decided that all school grants would be paid directly to schools and would not go through the local authority, thereby putting a ring fence around one of the biggest parts of local authority budgets. Again, that is the sort of thing that would be tested if agreements were put into law and a committee set up to monitor them.
	Those points are the essence of the Committee's report. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West referred to this, but the idea that the tragic death of one child could become a major debate in Parliament simply astounded the people we talked to in Sweden. They could not understand how Secretaries of State could be responsible for the actions of local authority workers in one case, in one part of the country. They just did not get it. We have a completely different culture. My hon. Friend is right that the public in this country have a different perception, but perhaps they have had centralisation for so long that they have become accustomed to it. We now have to debate and raise the possibility of doing things differently and giving to local government genuine freedoms that are embodied in statute and monitored by a committee, and greater financial control to local councils. If we have that debate and move in that direction, we will have a much healthier democracy in this country than we do now.

Neil Turner: I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. In the new year I shall be taking up a position as a Parliamentary Private Secretary within the Department, so this is my last opportunity to speak. I thank the Chairman for her good offices and all the guidance that she has given to me while I have served on the Committee, and I particularly thank the staff, who have done a tremendous job in drawing up the report and in getting our sometimes rambling discussions into order.
	The hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) seemed to be painting a picture of local government pre-1997 that was all sunny uplands. I was a local authority member for more years than I care to remember, certainly during the 1980s and 1990s, and that was not how I remember it. The then Conservative Government saw local authorities as theirs to command, and if they did not do as commanded, the Government abolished them, as they did with the metropolitan counties, or they starved them of funds, as happened year on year in the 1980s and 1990s. In Wigan, we had to make £10 million of cash cuts every year for three years on the trot; that was 1980s pound notes and not 2010's pound coins. We had to make a considerable reduction.
	There was almost no notification whatever of those cuts. In February, we were given the figure. By April we were starting a new financial year. It was a fire-fighting exercise in which we rushed around trying to make cuts and balance the books. There is no way in which local authorities can plan properly in those circumstances. We found that programmes were being cut halfway through. Money was being wasted on those programmes and no benefit came out of it. My view of the last Conservative Government's local authority relationships is different from that of the hon. Gentleman.
	On top of that, we had micro-management. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) mentioned compulsory competitive tendering. I was chair of the committee that had to implement CCT in Wigan. It reminded me of the French education system, under which every child in every school in every village in France would open their book at the same page at the same time on the same day. The micro-management of CCT meant that every council had to do everything in a certain way, and a week later they had to send out another letter and so on. It was more like a French farce than French education.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned inspection regimes. I seem to remember that inspections were brought about by the Audit Commission set up by the then Conservative Government; I checked that with my hon. Friend, whose memory is better than mine, and he agreed. I do not disagree in principle with inspections; I think it is right for local authorities to be properly inspected, and to be shown, in a proactive and positive way, where improvements can be made. However, I do not like the prescriptive system we had in the past, under which authorities that did not do as they were told got clobbered. That was very difficult.
	One problem was that targets were applied everywhere, so there was no relationship with local need or a local authority's resources, but we now have a different system. Under the new regime, targets are agreed by the local authority, which means that they have relevance to the area. More importantly, because local authorities are engaged in strategic partnerships that involve people and sectors across the entire community, such as commerce and voluntary organisations, targets-whether to do with sport, industry or regeneration, for instance-are part of an overall package bringing together all the sub-partnerships. That enables councils to promote their area on the basis of targets and priorities set by the local community, which is a very different way of dealing with things.
	We can now also work in strategic partnerships with primary care trusts. The Conservatives deprived local authorities of such influence in the 1980s and 1990s when they took their members off area health authorities, which resulted in a complete split between local health provision and local government provision. We have now addressed that, however. We can meet hospital and other health trusts and the family care trusts, and therefore we can draw together those elements of local government service that are particularly relevant to the broader social services.
	I do not know about other areas, but in Wigan we hold regular meetings-at least six a year-with health organisations and those involved in the local economy. The local MPs are also invited and can make a contribution. That works well and enables us to have better co-ordination. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) said that her authority has a public health officer who is jointly employed by the local authority and the PCT. We have that in Wigan as well, and it serves to cement the ability of those employed in the social and health services to work together better.
	There is also much pooling of resources between the two areas, so that people who are moving from social service care into health care do not fall between those two nets. There is not the problem of their being told, on the one hand, "No, you're not yet a health service problem; you're still a social services problem," and, on the other hand, social services saying, "No, her ability to look after herself is much worse, so she has to come under the health service." That happens where each service is protecting its own budget, so by pooling budgets we can prevent people from falling between those nets-or at least we can stop that happening often.
	Another idea that the Government are taking forward which I warmly welcome is that of multi-area agreements, for which we have pilot schemes in city regions. In the Greater Manchester area, the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities is generally recognised as being foremost among city regions in the way that it has set up voluntary relationships since the Greater Manchester council was abolished. What was important initially was that all but one of the councils were Labour controlled, but that has changed over time. I pay tribute to the leaders of all those councils, from all parties, because what has not changed is their recognition that this is not a zero-sum game. They see that if Tameside gains a benefit, it is not at the expense of Wigan but to the benefit of the whole of Greater Manchester. Therefore, all the leaders come together to ensure that Greater Manchester is seen as the beneficiary. With multi-area agreements and city regions, it is important to ensure that that approach is built into the psyche of local authority leaders. They should not see the situation as a zero-sum game, but see that something that benefits one authority in a city region will roll out benefits to the others.
	We have come a long way. I accept that the Government think that they have gone a lot further than the Committee thinks, but everyone on the Committee accepts that there has been significant movement in shifting the balance of power between central Government and local authorities. There is an awful lot more to do, but I perceive a willingness in the DCLG to ensure that that shift continues. That bodes well not only for local government but for citizens.
	Let me make some final points about local government finance, which, as hon. Members have said, is crucial to the relationship between central and local government. One of the best actions that the Government have taken in that regard is to introduce the certainty of a three-year system in the comprehensive spending review. That certainty of funding will allow local authorities to plan much better and to institute programmes knowing that they can carry them through. Let me make a suggestion to the Minister that I hope she will take back to the Secretary of State for discussion in the Cabinet: rather than having three-year blocks, which means that at the end of a block there is certainty only for the next year, there could be a rolling three-year programme. With such a programme, one would have some certainty in the first year regarding the next two years, and in the second year, one would have some indication as to what the fourth year would bring. Such a system could be used in both local and central Government to allow local authorities and Departments to plan more effectively.
	If finance is crucial to the relationship between central and local government, it is important to get the figures right, particularly the balance that central Government pays to local government. I think it is a universally acknowledged truth that a council in search of a revision of formula funding is a council in search of money. We must always recognise that there will never be a perfect funding formula, as there is no such thing. The idea of a perfect funding formula is a chimera, or a holy grail that can never be grasped. However, I think that our funding formula is reasonably reflective of the needs and resources of local authorities. If that is the case, it is incumbent on the Government to ensure that the formula is put into action as quickly as possible. It cannot be right that many local authorities are massively overfunded while others are massively underfunded. The needs of Kensington and Chelsea have been assessed at £89 million under the formula, but it is receiving £104 million in Government grant, whereas Wigan's needs have been assessed at £135 million, but it is receiving only £129 million. One local authority is receiving £14 million more than it is entitled to under the formula, while another is receiving £6 million less.
	I spoke earlier about the relationships between PCTs and local authorities, and unfortunately the same problem arises with PCT funding. I shall again make a comparison between Kensington and Chelsea and Wigan. Kensington and Chelsea needs £277 million but gets a grant of £337 million, which amounts to overfunding of £60 million. Wigan needs £537 million but gets £512 million in grant, which amounts to underfunding of £25 million.
	Adding together £6 million and £25 million makes a total of £31 million. That is the amount that the Wigan authority is not allowed to spend-last year, this year and next year-on the services that it wants to provide. Another way of looking at it is that it is money that is being taken out of people's pockets and, given Wigan's population of 300,000, that is a lot of money per head.
	That brings me back to the earlier point about the existence of a postcode lottery. It is clearly very much easier for a place like Kensington and Chelsea, which is getting so much more funding than it is entitled to, to reduce council tax or increase services, or do a bit of both, than it is for a place like Wigan. People ask why Wigan does not have the same services as other authorities, but they have no knowledge of where we stand in relation to the funding formula and the amount of money that we get. It is extremely important that the Government move forward as quickly as possible on funding.
	I do not want to return to the huge cuts that we used to get in the 1980s. Because of my experiences then, I am a big supporter of the damping process and the floors and ceilings that have been introduced, but the pace of change in funding for family care trusts and local authorities is far and away to slow. Speeding it up would help local authorities, and ensure that citizens were being treated fairly.
	One last point on the financial history is that we surely have to recognise that council tax is inherently unfair. That is what it was designed to be, and one of the few achievements of John Major and his Government was to make sure that it was. It is quite wrong that a person who lives in 25-bedroom mansion should pay only three times as much council tax as a person who lives in a two-up, two-down terraced house. That is not the right way to organise finances. The Lyons review was at least an opportunity to open the debate about that, although my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe suggested that it was a lost opportunity. The Government's response was far too timid, and we need to look at ways of ensuring that many more bands are introduced and that there is a much fairer relationship between bands. Finally, it is essential to have constant revaluations of houses in the council tax system, to ensure that the system does not get into the same untenable state that characterised the old rates.
	This is an excellent report. I am glad that I was able to contribute to it, and sorry that I will not be able to help my colleagues on the Committee in compiling further reports for the House. I believe that this is an extremely important area, and it is one that I feel very strongly drawn to.

Paul Beresford: I did not mention it, but several Labour Members did, pointing out that if there is a certain minimum level, variations could and should be the choice of the local population and the local authority. I think that she is wrong on that point.

Barbara Follett: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that variations up to a certain point can and should be the choice of the local authority, but it is the extent of those variations and people's varying expectations that were alluded to in the debate.
	Over the past 12 years, after an initial period that hon. Members have rightly categorised as intensive and centrally directed targeting-designed to get services that in many cases were of varying quality to come together and for agreement to be reached on what quality was-central Government are changing gear and reducing the number of strategic performance measures and re-emphasising the importance of local leadership and local decision making. As a result, councils have been given greater powers and freedoms and, thanks to the first ever three-year settlement, greater financial stability.
	I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Turner), whom I look forward to welcoming to the Department in the new year, recognises the benefits of this settlement and I am sure that he, like me, will discuss the benefits of rolling settlements with the Secretary of State in the new year.
	We have also reduced ring-fencing and devolved powers, which, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew)-once a member of my local authority, Stevenage borough council-will agree, has allowed the proliferation of parish councils. That can only be a good thing. In my own constituency and region, they have really grown and begun to flex their muscles locally. These increased powers have also led to councils making and enforcing some byelaws and getting increased choices in the democratic processes, both electorally and on leadership matters.
	As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) will be glad to hear and as he knows from previous interactions with me, discussions on the general power of competence are ongoing within Government. Although they are at a very early stage, this space is definitely worth watching. We are also looking at ways in which councils can raise money for specific local economic projects, and a great deal of work is being done-as yesterday's pre-Budget report alluded to-on ways in which councils can raise money with things such as tax increment financing, renewable heat and light incentives and feed-in tariff revenue streams.
	Most recently, the Government introduced the Business Rate Supplements Act 2009, which only received Royal Assent last month, so that county and unitary authorities and the Greater London authority could retain the proceeds of a supplement levied on their business rates to invest in additional projects aimed at promoting economic development-I emphasise the words "economic development"-in their area. As some hon. Members mentioned, we have also introduced the business improvement districts.
	We have given local councils an enhanced role in leading their communities, shaping their area and bringing their public services closer together. Indeed, since 2007, we have given this co-operation a statutory underpinning in the shape of local area agreements. Despite the remarks of the hon. Member for Mole Valley-in future we should call him the grand old duke of Mole Valley-we have reduced the performance management burden on local authorities, working alone or in partnership, by reducing the national indicator set to a suite of 188 measures and setting a cap of 35 on the designated improvement targets set by local area agreements. In 2011, we hope to review and consult on the indicators set and to reduce their number even further, and under sustainable communities legislation, citizens can put forward proposals for change in their areas through their local councils.
	Alongside those improvements, we have introduced extended scrutiny arrangements to give local councils and their electorate a powerful tool with which to influence the decisions that affect their daily lives. Measures in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 will further extend those, and we will use the Act to change the law to allow local authorities, and other "best value" organisations, to enter into much-needed mutual insurance schemes. In those and many other areas, the Government have demonstrated regularly how seriously they take their relationship with local government. Our ratification of the European charter of local self-government in our first 12 months in office is a good illustration of that commitment. The central-local partnership and the joint signature of the central-local concordat in December 2007 are further clear indications of the value that the Government place on their special relationship with local government.
	The debate about the balance between central and local government is not, however, just an academic exercise; as I said earlier, it is about getting the highest quality services for local people. That is where the Total Place approach, as outlined in this week's White Paper, entitled "Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government", will help to make a real difference on the ground by giving local areas more control over what they spend their money on and by reducing burdens, especially where the cost of national performance monitoring, assessments and data collection outweighs the benefits to local areas.
	Once again, and despite allegations, we have made a very serious attempt to reduce burdens, and I hope that in putting the front line first, we will go even further through the commitments to reduce burdens. Our measures to put the front line first will go hand in hand with a new drive to make more comparative performance data public and to allow the Government and the people to hold service providers to account for the safety, quality and cost of the services they provide. The new comprehensive area assessment, also announced this week, has a part in that openness and transparency. Unlike its predecessor-the comprehensive performance assessment-the CAA focuses on outcomes delivered by councils in partnership with other local service providers, rather than just on the performance of individual councils.
	Despite councils in some areas performing very well, internally and externally, some areas have been flagged up-for example, my county council of Hertfordshire and the provision of social housing-as causing concern. Those areas have been given a red flag. Making data available to the public empowers the public. Total Place is a revolution and will revolutionise how we deliver public services locally, regionally and nationally. We are looking at a huge change, some of which I have seen beginning on the ground. And it works!
	Places such as Margate are delivering a comprehensive range of services through the portal of the local library. People can go and talk about refuse or their housing benefit, or attend a sexual health clinic while simultaneously taking their children to the local library. I am glad to say that the number of children attending that library has trebled over the past few months. We are making a huge assessment of assets in areas such as Kent. It is this kind of drive-
	 Debate interrupted, and Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54(4)).
	 The  Deputy Speaker put the deferred Questions (Standing Order No. 54 (5)).

Resolved,
	That, for the year ending with 31 March 2011-
	(1) resources, not exceeding £191,087,107,000, be authorised, on account, for use for defence and civil services as set out in HC 14, HC 19, HC 21, HC 25, HC 27 and HC 33, and
	(2) a sum, not exceeding £190,506,334,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, to meet the costs of defence and civil services as so set out.- (Lyn Brown.)
	 Ordered, That a Bill be brought in upon the foregoing Resolutions;
	That the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Chancellor the Exchequer, Mr. Liam Byrne, Mr. Stephen Timms, Sarah McCarthy-Fry and Ian Pearson introduce the Bill.

Siobhain McDonagh: When I called for a debate on nuclear test veterans, I did so purely as a constituency MP. I wanted to highlight the case of a constituent of mine whom I have been helping for more than 11 years. I raised this case in Parliament just over seven years ago and I had hoped that the matter would have been resolved by now, but it has not.
	My purpose in raising this issue is to persuade the Government finally to settle the case of the nuclear test veterans. I want them to show the same compassion, humanity and generosity that has characterised so many of their policies over the past 12 years, and to prove again their commitment to our armed forces. The families of nuclear test veterans are not convinced by that record, however. They believe that their husbands, fathers, brothers and grandfathers were expected to do something that was wrong, and something that we would not ask anyone to do now, which has badly affected their health. They also believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Government are unwilling to say sorry or to act as though they were sorry. For many years, they feel that the Government have had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards giving the veterans the recognition and recompense that they deserve.
	I cannot judge whether the families are right or wrong on that. However, since news of this Adjournment debate came out, I have been contacted by lawyers acting for the families of nuclear test veterans, and they have made serious allegations about the Ministry of Defence's approach. If true, something outrageous is taking place. If false, that raises serious questions about the integrity of those lawyers. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that the MOD has been doing all that it can.
	As I have said, I am raising this issue as a constituency MP, on behalf of a constituent. Shirley Denson is a remarkable woman who has suffered more than her fair share of misfortune. I first met Shirley as long ago as 1998, when she told me about the tragic life of her late husband, Squadron Leader Eric Denson. When he was just 26 years old, Flight Lieutenant Denson captained one of the three Canberra aircraft that were deployed to collect samples while flying through the mushroom cloud created by a 3 megaton nuclear detonation on 28 April 1958. It has been estimated that, while in the cloud, just 49 minutes after detonation, Flight Lieutenant Denson and his crew would each have been exposed to 13,000 rads of radiation.
	Flight Lieutenant Denson was ordered to keep the plane there for six minutes. Because of a fault on one of the dosimeters, this was four minutes longer than the aircraft should have been inside the cloud. When the plane landed, the ground crew said that it was the hottest aircraft they had ever handled. Then, back on the ground, the crews would have been exposed to massive radiation fallout from the water that they drank, the fish that they caught and the food that they ate.
	I understand the eventual total dosage that Flight Lieutenant Denson received could have been the equivalent of 40,000 X-rays. His vomiting started almost immediately and became so severe that he was forced to delay his return from the Pacific and to stay on in Fiji for a further three days. He was then told that his dosage had exceeded the legal limit and was sent home. He was not allowed to take part in further tests.
	Even though Flight Lieutenant Denson was in obvious ill health, there were no medical checks or a medical follow-up on his return, and nothing was done to alert him of the probable cause of his progressive medical problems. Significantly, no mention was made in his medical records of his activities in the south Pacific in 1958. Given the sensitivity surrounding the tests in a period of global conflict that it is hard for modern Britons to comprehend, there were strict orders of secrecy and he did not discuss these events with anyone. His wife did not know the details of his high dosage of ionising radiation. Even though he suffered for many years with breathing difficulties, acute sinusitis, mood swings, anxieties and depressions, she knew nothing.
	In obvious medical difficulties, Squadron Leader Denson ended his own life in 1976 at the age of just 44, after 18 years of pain and upset. He was the father of four children, three of whom were born after 28 April 1958. His health problems live on in these three children, who have all also experienced lasting health problems. Twenty years passed since his death, during which Shirley Denson brought up four daughters on her own. Then, in 1997, she was alerted to the latest scientific evidence about the Christmas Island tests and started her own investigations.
	Slowly, Shirley began to learn the true effect of the radiation poisoning on her husband. She has had to fight to find out more. As I have said, she is a remarkable woman. She has faced difficulties at every turn. Officials have insinuated that her late husband was sickly and unbalanced from boyhood. They suggested that his suicide was somehow inevitable and had nothing to do with Christmas Island. But she has pointed out that her husband was pronounced among the fittest of his peers and was an expert pilot. He was a proud Yorkshireman, as proud as any before him, who joined the RAF because he wanted to serve his country, and was a credit to the squadron that he would eventually lead. Mrs. Denson has gathered a great deal of expert support. Most bluntly of all, one medical officer told her, "From the moment he flew into that cloud he was a walking dead man."
	Since then, a study of the genetic status of New Zealand veterans, carried out by Dr. Rowland and his team at Massey university, has shown a very high frequency of translocations in the chromosomes of veterans. Dr. Rowland has made a very convincing case that the probable cause is exposure to radiation at nuclear tests. His report was wholeheartedly endorsed by a cross-party parliamentary inquiry two years ago. As a layman, it is hard to see how someone who was at or near the nuclear tests could not have experienced radiation or ingested it through the food they ate, the water they drank or the air they breathed. It is hard to see how this could not have led to health issues later in life, or to genetic changes affecting their descendants.
	I am not a scientist; I am a constituency MP. Seven years ago, I spoke in the House to ask for justice for Eric and Shirley Denson. I hoped that progress would have been made. I hoped that there would be an apology for the families of these service men, who unquestioningly and courageously followed orders-perhaps something that said, "We would not do anything like this again, and we are sorry for the suffering it has caused."
	I had also hoped that people such as Shirley Denson would have received a modest recompense. Nobody wants to bankrupt the MOD; we just want something to provide some comfort to the families and to allow them to start to draw a line under the whole affair. But here I am again, seven years on, and the opportunity that the Government had to appear magnanimous and generous seems to have passed them by.
	Millions of pounds have been spent in the courts and not a penny has reached the families of those who have suffered. Ministers have repeatedly said that they want to offer veterans and their families a settlement, but years and years and years have passed by, and so have many of the veterans themselves. They have not lived to see the apology or recompense they deserve.
	Currently, more than 1,000 veterans and their families from all over the Commonwealth are bringing a group action case against the Government. Earlier this week, their legal representative asked to see me to give their side of where we had got to. The lawyer told me that the Ministry of Defence had chosen to defend the claim not on the grounds of whether the detonations had caused suffering, but on the grounds that the veterans had made their claims too late. There is a limit of three years after an injury has been discovered in which a person can make a claim for personal injury, and the MOD's lawyers chose to base its defence on the case being out of time. That is called a limitation defence.
	Whether such a defence is correct within the law or not, it appears to a layman to be a very mean defence. Instead of looking at the merits of people's actual claims, the MOD seem to be saying that it would not pay out because people had missed an arbitrary three-year deadline. I still do not know why anyone with an underlying desire to settle would use a defence of limitation. I simply do not get it. In public relations terms, it is a disaster. At best, it looks like a way of delaying pay-outs. At worst, it looks like a way of slithering out of taking responsibility for something for which one really is responsible.
	In June this year, Mr. Justice Foskett made a judgment that largely rejected the limitation defence. His ruling is disputed but, as I understand it, he used his discretion and ordered all parties to forget about limitation and just reach a settlement. He said:
	"The Government is, of course, pledged to settle legal cases by alternative dispute resolution in all suitable cases whenever the other party agrees to it. In my view this is such a case."
	He also ordered the Government to pay millions of pounds in costs to the veterans' lawyers. What has happened since is a matter of disagreement.
	My hon. Friend the Minister, in a written answer in  Hansard, said that
	"genuine negotiations have taken place between the parties respective counsels and a settlement proposal was made by the Ministry of Defence, although I cannot disclose the amount. To date, no response has been received from the claimants' counsel or the law firm representing them (Rosenblatts). This is obviously disappointing, but we remain open to meaningful discussions."-[ Official Report, 7 December 2009; Vol. 502, c. 98W.]
	However, the public affairs firm working with the lawyers has written to me, stating:
	"The MoD say...that they have not received a response from the claimants counsel to the proposed settlement offer, but this is because we have never received such an offer."
	I understand that my hon. Friend has said that the contents of any settlement proposal cannot be communicated without breaching a confidentiality agreement. However, the fact is that Shirley Denson does not know the contents. There are more than 1,000 claimants, and they do not know the contents. It seems ridiculous that there can be any negotiations when nobody involved knows what they are. How can my constituent be sure her interests are being taken into account by the Government or by her lawyers when all proceedings are taking place in private? How can anyone know for sure that this Government have as their central aim doing their best for our veterans while everything is clouded in secrecy? Even if there ever were negotiations, they have obviously broken down, and the case will have to go back to the courts. It therefore appears that the next stage will be an appeal by the MOD against the limitation ruling. Even that will not take place until-

Kevan Jones: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for securing this debate on what is, as she said, a serious subject. The nuclear test veterans issue remains an emotive one more than 50 years since the first nuclear tests were conducted. Some 28,000 British servicemen were involved in the test programmes, the majority in logistic support. I certainly recognise the debt of gratitude we owe to those servicemen who took part in delivering those important nuclear tests.
	I understand that last month Members received a letter from Mr. Neil Sampson, a partner in the law firm Rosenblatt, which represents The British Atomic Veterans' Claimants Group. I believe that Mr. Sampson's letter made several misleading assertions, and I wrote to Members on 4 December to refute them. I am glad to have the opportunity today to go into more detail and to make the Ministry of Defence's position clear.
	For some years, a number of veterans of the test programme have claimed that their health has been directly damaged by deliberate, or accidental, exposure to ionising radiation. The MOD, and successive Governments, have consistently rejected these claims. That is based on three comprehensive and exhaustive studies, none of which found a greater incidence of mortality or cancer in nuclear test veterans than in a matched control group.
	Most critically, I want to focus Members' attention on precisely what has happened in the litigation process, so that we are in no doubt about the current situation. Legal proceedings were served on the MOD in April 2005, and since April 2006 the veterans' case has been handled by Rosenblatt Solicitors of London. The particulars of the claim were served in December 2006 and the MOD served its summary defence in January 2008. The MOD disclosed a list of 12,295 documents in June 2008, and the parties identified five lead cases each to be heard in the High Court that were considered to be representative of the entire claimant cohort. A High Court trial was held between 21 January and 6 February 2009 to rule on limitation only. I should explain that the Limitation Act 1980 sets out that personal injury claims should be brought within three years of the date of injury, or within three years of the injured person's date of knowledge that the injury may have been caused by past events.
	The Court was asked to rule on whether the MOD was prejudiced by the delay in bringing claims, given that many of its key witnesses are no longer alive or are not able, due to age, infirmity or loss of memory, to give evidence. The Court's judgment on limitation was handed down on 5 June 2009 and ran to more than 200 pages. The main findings were that five lead cases were time-barred and five were not. Importantly, the judge exercised his discretion under section 33 of the Limitation Act to permit the out-of-time cases to proceed to trial. That means that the group action of 1,011 cases may now proceed to a trial on causation and breach of duty. I should like to clarify one point. Contrary to media reports, the veterans have not secured a ruling that compensation should be paid. The ruling was on the limitation point, which is subject to challenge in the Court of Appeal.
	The judge expressed concern about the claimants' ability to prove that their condition was caused by exposure to ionising radiation in the tests. He said that he did not want them to be misled by his judgment into thinking that they will be successful at a causation trial. He acknowledged that the case law on causation as it stands, if strictly read, poses a potential problem for the claimants. He said of one case that
	"in terms of apparent strength of this claim, on the evidence as it stands, it seems to me to be arguable, but not overwhelmingly so".
	He was also of the view that the cases can be tried fairly on the documentary evidence alone, and that the absence of the vast majority of witnesses would not be unfair or prejudice the MOD's case. He acknowledged that it might be an injustice if the MOD had to pay the claimants' lawyers costs. I will cover that issue later.
	Following submissions on 19 June 2009, the judge granted the MOD leave to appeal his decision, not only on the limitation issue but regarding legal costs. The judge concluded:
	"The Government is, of course, pledged to settle legal cases by Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in all suitable cases whenever the other party agrees to it. In my view this is such a case".
	Despite what is claimed by Neil Sampson of Rosenblatt, I have taken great care in my dealings with this case to ensure that the MOD has adhered to the judge's wishes in all aspects of the case. We have attempted to settle the matter through ADR by holding counsel-to-counsel negotiations. My hon. Friend has mentioned confidentiality, and the ADR process is confidential between the parties, so I cannot reveal the details of those negotiations as that would breach the confidentiality agreement between the two parties.
	I continue to respect the confidentiality of that process, but I cannot allow Rosenblatt's allegations to stand unchallenged, so I shall address them by setting out exactly what has happened. Between the hearings of 19 June and mid-November, genuine negotiations took place between the two parties' respective counsels-Benjamin Browne QC for the claimants and Charles Gibson QC for the MOD. I understand that Benjamin Browne is no longer the counsel for Rosenblatt. For the avoidance of doubt, let me make it clear that when I describe meetings between the parties, or meetings between the MOD and Rosenblatt Solicitors, I mean that the respective QCs representing the MOD and Rosenblatt have met. That is not unusual when settling a case such as this.
	On 29 September I, as the responsible Minister, authorised a settlement proposal, although again I cannot disclose the amount. The proposal was conveyed to Rosenblatt's counsel. Whether or not he passed this proposal on to Rosenblatt is a matter for them, although it would be remarkable if he did not. It certainly appears that the veterans themselves were not told about it, and no response has been received to date.
	I therefore gave instructions in early November that the claimants' lawyers be given another chance, and an e-mail was sent by Charles Gibson QC to Benjamin Browne QC. Again, it would be curious if counsel did not pass this on to Rosenblatt but, again, it has been met with silence. Therefore, no settlement has been achieved.
	I think this demonstrates that the MOD, and myself as the Minister responsible, have made every effort to engage with the claimants' lawyers, but without success. That left us with no option but to proceed with an appeal, which is listed for a three-week window starting on 4 May 2010.
	I should also like to put on the record that Rosenblatt seem to have engaged in a remarkable amount of unusual activity outside the legal process, which I am concerned about. First, I find it quite remarkable that a public relations company was in attendance at the High Court trial, on behalf of the claimants. I understand from my team that that was the first time any of them had experienced that.
	The second matter of great concern to me is that the parliamentary lobbyists who claim to represent Rosenblatt met a special adviser to the Secretary of State for Defence in an attempt to persuade him to change the Department's stance. Curiously, the lobbyists appeared to be as much in the dark as the veterans about the fact that a settlement proposal had been made.
	Thirdly, I received a letter from Mr. Neil Sampson, who wrote to me in my capacity as a Member of Parliament rather than as Minister for veterans, asking to meet me. Interestingly, he signed the letter as legal counsel for the atomic veterans claimant group, but he did not use paper headed with the Rosenblatt name. When all those factors are taken together, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that there has been an attempt to circumvent the legal process.
	I turn now to the question of costs. The High Court ordered the MOD to pay the claimants' counsel and Rosenblatt costs of £7.5 million, although the Department argued that costs should properly be reserved, until the outcome of the Court of Appeal hearing. That was based on the fact that permission had been granted for the MOD to take the case to the Court of Appeal, where some or all of the High Court judgment might be overturned. Even on the judge's own analysis, the claimants' causation case was weak, leaving the MOD in fear that some, if not many, of the claimants might discontinue their claims. The judge dismissed that argument, but added that the MOD can seek a refund in the event of any appeal succeeding.
	An application will be made to the High Court tomorrow morning by the claimants' counsel-although that will not be Mr. Browne-and Rosenblatt about the litigation, and there will be a request for even more money. The claimants will say that they are substantially out of pocket in this case and will request a court order for a further £2 million on account. That would make an interim total of £9.5 million, which they claim covers about 80 per cent. of their costs, and it implies that the legal costs to date are approaching a staggering £12 million.
	Indeed, Mr. Sampson devotes the first half of the witness statement attached to Rosenblatt's application to his costs.